Mini Business Ethics & Freedom
Tibor R. Machan
In matters of ethics one is best equipped to understand when one is close up. Politics is different, as is law, although one reason for having courts is to hash out cases with all the details on view. Otherwise misjudgment lurks nearby.
A recent incident brings to light how business ethics bears on our day to day affairs and how it is really impossible to handle these the way so many people, especially politicians and bureaucrats, would like to, namely via government regulation.
Someone near me found a TV repairer on the Internet and set up an appointment, after trying to make sure the repairer knew a thing or two about the set in need of work. The repairer asked that he could come out on Sunday and it was agreed that that would work out fine. Between 11 AM and 1 PM was the window for the visit.
By noon it was evident that something went astray--the repairer got lost or met with some mishap. But once reached by phone it turned out he wasn’t lost or anything. He was just delayed for reasons the customer didn’t need to know. But he would be there by 2, latest. By 3:30 PM another call went out but only a voicemail system answered it. The customer indicated some irritation with having to wait so long without being informed as to the new time or the cause of the delay. At 5 PM the repairer finally called saying the deal is off, he will not be there to fix the set, period.
Now there is and should be nothing illegal about what the repairer did, anymore than there is or ought to be anything illegal when people fail to keep their promises. Still, failing to keep a promise can be quite costly and in this case the cost was that the customer had to just sit and wait and wait while a lot else could have been done, errands taken care of, etc., instead.
Now with thousand of this kind of malpractice quite a lot of losses could be chalked up, not to mention the irritation. So the temptation often arise to bring in some kind of law enforcement.
But the customer here was, in effect, asking for the mess since there was no reason to just accept the repairer’s word in the first place. And even if that was all that was convenient, there is still some kind of recourse through an outfit such as the Better Business Bureau. So, clearly, brining in any kind of legal authority would be (a) unjustified and (b) impractical.
There are zillions of these minor mishaps in commerce, often easily seen as the fault of one or another party to a verbal deal. And that is to be expected, after all, in multilayered commercial relations, where tripping up is possible on so many fronts. Nor is this the case only with commerce! The way to cope here, however, isn’t to empower government officials, who are themselves just as capable and even more likely to misbehave as are the parties to all the deals that are mismanaged.
The customer in the above case cut the losses and went on to get service elsewhere. And that is just what these minor or even major business ethics infractions need, not some bureaucracy that is teaming with busy bodies who pretend that they can rectify matters in these kinds of instances and even far worse ones, despite being way removed from the cases and needing to pay attention to their own problems. (This is the gist of what James Buchanan’s and Gordon Tullock’s public choice theory teaches!)
Sometimes those who defend the free market--or freedom in general--overstate the promise of these, as if perfection would always emerge from free men and women going about their affairs without government intervention and regulation. That promise is unjustified and is due mainly to the fact that many economists who support free markets do not believe in objective values, in anyone being able to tell right from wrong, good from bad. It’s all subjective, they believe. And then, of course, nothing wrong can happen so long as people act freely and interact voluntarily. But this is a very mistaken idea.
Freedom does not promise perfection by a long shot. But those who insist on perfection are themselves being irrational and fail to realize that bringing in governments just makes things worse, in the main. That’s because governments use coercive force from which human affairs very, very rarely benefit!
Monday, June 08, 2009
Friday, June 05, 2009
Catering to Altruists
Tibor R. Machan
In a speech presumably addressing “the Muslim world,” President Obama tried to be quite critical of American culture while making hardly any mention of some of the Muslim World’s outrageously immoral legacy. Let me for now not focus on how accommodating Obama managed to be toward the Muslin countries, many of which make no bones about being, for example, officially misogynous and awfully crude about punishing so called criminals. Nor is it worth discussing now how Muslim countries treat homosexuals. While America the terrible, the one Obama appears to believe is in constant, relentless need to apologize for itself, is always put on the defensive, the Muslim world seems to be getting a pass from Mr. Obama even regarding its most barbaric practices. It is really annoying to have the president of the United States of America carry on this way.
In this speech Obama said that as president of the USA it is his duty “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” and that “Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.”
But wait just a minute. Sometimes stereotypes are actually accurate, especially when they are about people in a very homogenous society. It was not altogether insulting when during the Third Reich people formed a very unfavorable image of Germans as such. Sure there were exceptions but as a rule the Germans were then a very disagreeable, ugly lot. Sitting by and even taking active part while 6 million Jews are being exterminated by one’s leader--Fuehrer--lends itself to people thinking badly of you, of all of you, in fact. So sometimes stereotyping makes very good sense.
Just think of how often the early European immigrants to the Americas are now seen as vicious invaders who treated the natives with nearly universal brutality. Is that some “crude stereotype”? Or maybe it is in fact the truth, generally, with only occasional significant exceptions?
Then consider, also, what Obama thinks is a nasty stereotype of America, “a self-interested empire.” To start with, empires have no selves--they are not individual human beings, no collective entities. Empires consist of some rather few rulers in a country, ones who take advantage of their position to bully others around the world. Often this bullying is anything but self-interested--most often it is perpetrated as an intensely altruistic mission, one aiming to export only good thing to other lands. It is usually such altruism that leads to the policy of building empires, even if some elements of empire building do flow from a country’s rulers’ interest to benefit themselves.
Then there is the plain fact that America is not being stereotyped when understood as a country that welcomes a certain kind of self-interest on the part of its citizenry. After all, the American Founders were very fond of everyone’s right to the pursuit of happiness, something that can properly be regarded as selfish. I for one make no secret of my desire to live a happy life and, thus, to be significantly selfish, though not to the point of intruding upon my fellows, ripping them off, demanding that they live for me, something many altruists appear not to mind doing.
That, by the way, is what’s so disingenuous about altruists--they advocate that other people think not of themselves first but of them! Just a pretense at generosity, then, not the genuine article which is actually the feature of those who seek happiness and are glad that so do others!
When I was ready to escape Europe, especially communism, a major reason was that in the West and in America, especially, there appeared to be a public policy afoot based on the belief in everyone’s basic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--all rather selfish things, if you ask me. A country that makes this its official public policy rather than some phony “ask not what you can do for yourself but what you can do for your country,” is truly user-friendly for its population. And so I gladly accept that stereotype about America, despite our current president’s cavalier belittling of this aspect of the country.
Finally, for now, why is it the president’s job to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam or America or anyone else? Is the president our moral guide? Is he our parent whose job is to cultivate ethics in their children? Not at all--he is the presiding officer of the federal government, period.
It is pathetic how perverse an idea of political leadership guides this new president. He should back off already.
Tibor R. Machan
In a speech presumably addressing “the Muslim world,” President Obama tried to be quite critical of American culture while making hardly any mention of some of the Muslim World’s outrageously immoral legacy. Let me for now not focus on how accommodating Obama managed to be toward the Muslin countries, many of which make no bones about being, for example, officially misogynous and awfully crude about punishing so called criminals. Nor is it worth discussing now how Muslim countries treat homosexuals. While America the terrible, the one Obama appears to believe is in constant, relentless need to apologize for itself, is always put on the defensive, the Muslim world seems to be getting a pass from Mr. Obama even regarding its most barbaric practices. It is really annoying to have the president of the United States of America carry on this way.
In this speech Obama said that as president of the USA it is his duty “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear” and that “Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.”
But wait just a minute. Sometimes stereotypes are actually accurate, especially when they are about people in a very homogenous society. It was not altogether insulting when during the Third Reich people formed a very unfavorable image of Germans as such. Sure there were exceptions but as a rule the Germans were then a very disagreeable, ugly lot. Sitting by and even taking active part while 6 million Jews are being exterminated by one’s leader--Fuehrer--lends itself to people thinking badly of you, of all of you, in fact. So sometimes stereotyping makes very good sense.
Just think of how often the early European immigrants to the Americas are now seen as vicious invaders who treated the natives with nearly universal brutality. Is that some “crude stereotype”? Or maybe it is in fact the truth, generally, with only occasional significant exceptions?
Then consider, also, what Obama thinks is a nasty stereotype of America, “a self-interested empire.” To start with, empires have no selves--they are not individual human beings, no collective entities. Empires consist of some rather few rulers in a country, ones who take advantage of their position to bully others around the world. Often this bullying is anything but self-interested--most often it is perpetrated as an intensely altruistic mission, one aiming to export only good thing to other lands. It is usually such altruism that leads to the policy of building empires, even if some elements of empire building do flow from a country’s rulers’ interest to benefit themselves.
Then there is the plain fact that America is not being stereotyped when understood as a country that welcomes a certain kind of self-interest on the part of its citizenry. After all, the American Founders were very fond of everyone’s right to the pursuit of happiness, something that can properly be regarded as selfish. I for one make no secret of my desire to live a happy life and, thus, to be significantly selfish, though not to the point of intruding upon my fellows, ripping them off, demanding that they live for me, something many altruists appear not to mind doing.
That, by the way, is what’s so disingenuous about altruists--they advocate that other people think not of themselves first but of them! Just a pretense at generosity, then, not the genuine article which is actually the feature of those who seek happiness and are glad that so do others!
When I was ready to escape Europe, especially communism, a major reason was that in the West and in America, especially, there appeared to be a public policy afoot based on the belief in everyone’s basic right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--all rather selfish things, if you ask me. A country that makes this its official public policy rather than some phony “ask not what you can do for yourself but what you can do for your country,” is truly user-friendly for its population. And so I gladly accept that stereotype about America, despite our current president’s cavalier belittling of this aspect of the country.
Finally, for now, why is it the president’s job to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam or America or anyone else? Is the president our moral guide? Is he our parent whose job is to cultivate ethics in their children? Not at all--he is the presiding officer of the federal government, period.
It is pathetic how perverse an idea of political leadership guides this new president. He should back off already.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Politics as Fantasy
Tibor R. Machan
It began with Socrates and his pupil Plato who in that world famous dialogue, Republic, set out to discuss human excellence. In the process Socrates used an analogy, the perfect or ideal society. It was easier to study than the individual human soul. (We do this when studying chemistry, for example, and we use huge plastic balls to stand in for atoms and such, tiny entities we cannot study directly.)
One point Socrates is supposed to have made, according to Plato, is that this ideal society they sketched wasn't meant to be some blueprint for people to try to implement. It was more like a model and was supposed to play the same role, as a means to emphasize what's important to keep in mind as one thinks about politics. For example, while Socrates spoke of a philosopher king, that was to stress the importance of human reason in forging policy not the need for some actual super-person, a king.
But that point has been widely misunderstood for centuries--and indeed there is some ambiguity in the dialogue, so disputation on it is to be expected. Too many folks have taken Socrates and Plato to have wanted us all to strive to implement an ideal society. Since, however, their purpose wasn't that at all but ultimately to sketch how human beings should live, what should guide their conduct--namely, careful thought one would carry out sometime (maybe way) before the conduct in question--the numerous attempts to implement the ideal society had to fail.
Indeed, some very sophisticated students of Plato's works defend the position that the main teaching of the Republic is that politics can have only a limited function in making life good for people. What they need to do is to direct themselves--their own lives and those of their fellows who will consult them--thoughtfully and not wait for some king or government to figure things out. The capacity of politics to do good is very minimal by this account.
If this is indeed the teaching of Socrates and Plato, it oddly anticipates the teaching of the American Founders. They also believed that human happiness or success in life must be an individual and social but not primarily or even mainly a political feat. Which is why they wrote that government's role is to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness, nothing more than that. But this lesson has been rejected by too many people since time immemorial. They keep seeking total salvation from politics and we are back to this again, with the leadership of President Barack Obama. He apparently shares the ideas of The New Republic magazine's erudite modern liberal columnist, Leon Wieseltier, who just recently wrote that "contrary to what [Americans] have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government...etc."
This kind of thinking is extremely hazardous. It exemplifies the valuable but often forgotten cliche, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It does this with nearly the same tendencies in matters of politics as did the efforts of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and a host of others throughout human history who wanted to implement the prefect plan.
By aiming to do everything for us, by pretending to have the answer to innumerable questions, Mr. Obama is facilitating the ruin of the great project of the Founders, as well as of Socrates and Plato, namely, to restrain oneself when assigning tasks to governments, to bureaucrats, to politicians and to all their eager beaver little helpers at prestigious universities and publications.
Not unless we return to heed to teachings of those folks who knew how limited the capacity of politics is for improving on human life will we have a good chance at a decent life and society.
Tibor R. Machan
It began with Socrates and his pupil Plato who in that world famous dialogue, Republic, set out to discuss human excellence. In the process Socrates used an analogy, the perfect or ideal society. It was easier to study than the individual human soul. (We do this when studying chemistry, for example, and we use huge plastic balls to stand in for atoms and such, tiny entities we cannot study directly.)
One point Socrates is supposed to have made, according to Plato, is that this ideal society they sketched wasn't meant to be some blueprint for people to try to implement. It was more like a model and was supposed to play the same role, as a means to emphasize what's important to keep in mind as one thinks about politics. For example, while Socrates spoke of a philosopher king, that was to stress the importance of human reason in forging policy not the need for some actual super-person, a king.
But that point has been widely misunderstood for centuries--and indeed there is some ambiguity in the dialogue, so disputation on it is to be expected. Too many folks have taken Socrates and Plato to have wanted us all to strive to implement an ideal society. Since, however, their purpose wasn't that at all but ultimately to sketch how human beings should live, what should guide their conduct--namely, careful thought one would carry out sometime (maybe way) before the conduct in question--the numerous attempts to implement the ideal society had to fail.
Indeed, some very sophisticated students of Plato's works defend the position that the main teaching of the Republic is that politics can have only a limited function in making life good for people. What they need to do is to direct themselves--their own lives and those of their fellows who will consult them--thoughtfully and not wait for some king or government to figure things out. The capacity of politics to do good is very minimal by this account.
If this is indeed the teaching of Socrates and Plato, it oddly anticipates the teaching of the American Founders. They also believed that human happiness or success in life must be an individual and social but not primarily or even mainly a political feat. Which is why they wrote that government's role is to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our happiness, nothing more than that. But this lesson has been rejected by too many people since time immemorial. They keep seeking total salvation from politics and we are back to this again, with the leadership of President Barack Obama. He apparently shares the ideas of The New Republic magazine's erudite modern liberal columnist, Leon Wieseltier, who just recently wrote that "contrary to what [Americans] have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government...etc."
This kind of thinking is extremely hazardous. It exemplifies the valuable but often forgotten cliche, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It does this with nearly the same tendencies in matters of politics as did the efforts of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and a host of others throughout human history who wanted to implement the prefect plan.
By aiming to do everything for us, by pretending to have the answer to innumerable questions, Mr. Obama is facilitating the ruin of the great project of the Founders, as well as of Socrates and Plato, namely, to restrain oneself when assigning tasks to governments, to bureaucrats, to politicians and to all their eager beaver little helpers at prestigious universities and publications.
Not unless we return to heed to teachings of those folks who knew how limited the capacity of politics is for improving on human life will we have a good chance at a decent life and society.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Is Judge Sotomayor's Tolerance of Bias Shocking?
Tibor R. Machan
Just after President Obama selected her as his nominee for the seat opened on the U. S. Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice David Suiter, some statements came to light that seemed to call into question Judge Sotomayor's loyalty to judicial impartiality.
As reported all over the media, the judge made the point once, in 2001 speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging." No, she didn't say it should or it is a good thing that it will but that it will, in fact, make a difference. She had also said, that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Of course, such an attitude about making decisions on the U. S. Supreme Court--or, indeed, on any court of law--is objectionable or would be if someone where to champion being seriously swayed that way in applying the law of the land. Yet, is it objectionable if one states that one's sex or ethnicity is going to make a difference?
Many people in the fields studying human judgment hold this view. Recently a guest speaker at Chapman University's research center in experimental economics, Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, gave a talk titled "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences" in which he argued that not only is bias inescapable but it's a good thing from the point of view of epistemological efficiency. In plain terms this means that human beings are better off when quite often they rely on their biases as they judge the world and their fellows around them. Part of why this may be so is that it's impossible to know all the relevant information pertaining to an issue; so relying on certain habits of mind formed by one's past experiences--which gave one a bias or prejudice, though not necessarily an irrational one--is unavoidable and valuable. It is a mistake to believe, this thesis suggests, that anyone can be totally impartial when making significant judgments about the world.
So when Judge Sotomayor tells us, in the spirit of full disclosure and based on what contemporary psychology and epistemology teach, that someone with extensive experience of a culture and the people in it is probably more likely to reach more reliable--"better"--conclusions than someone who is utterly unfamiliar with these, she is saying something pretty simple and true. Yes, it may sound to some like excusing some kind of ethnic bias but it need by no means amount to that. And in the case of Judge Sotomayor, who in the very same talk she gave at UC Berkeley Law School--used to be called Boalt Hall--also insisted that every effort should be made to leave one's personal (including political) preferences outside the court room, making mention of what appears on any fair reading a simple attestation of a fact should not be taken as a grievous professional fault.
A scholar I respect a great deal compared the admission of bias on the part of Judge Sotomayor to such an admission by other professionals whose skill is vital to the performance of their tasks. This scholar noted that if Judge Sotomayor were a brain surgeon or some other medical specialist, there would be no mention of empathy as any sort of professional qualification.
Yet even in the field of medicine we are often concerned with "bedside manners"--which boils down to what are called people skills--on the part of healthcare professionals. I can personally testify that when a doctor who is working to improve one's health treats a patient with total indifference, as if the patient were some kind of inanimate object rolling by on a conveyor belt instead of a human being with concerns and fears and such, this is not welcome and I can only assume that in the evaluation of such a professional it would make a difference--though by no means substitute for professional, skill, competence, or excellence.
I am no expert on who is or is not qualified to sit on the U. S. Supreme Court but I suspect that some of the reservations I have encountered in the media--voiced by various conservative commentators and even legal theorists--is something of a reach. I would be much happier if the dispute about Judge Sotomayor focused on her legal proficiency and not on her perhaps not to well expressed concern about showing a deep understanding of those standing before judges across the legal landscape.
Tibor R. Machan
Just after President Obama selected her as his nominee for the seat opened on the U. S. Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice David Suiter, some statements came to light that seemed to call into question Judge Sotomayor's loyalty to judicial impartiality.
As reported all over the media, the judge made the point once, in 2001 speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging." No, she didn't say it should or it is a good thing that it will but that it will, in fact, make a difference. She had also said, that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Of course, such an attitude about making decisions on the U. S. Supreme Court--or, indeed, on any court of law--is objectionable or would be if someone where to champion being seriously swayed that way in applying the law of the land. Yet, is it objectionable if one states that one's sex or ethnicity is going to make a difference?
Many people in the fields studying human judgment hold this view. Recently a guest speaker at Chapman University's research center in experimental economics, Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, gave a talk titled "Homo Heuristicus: Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences" in which he argued that not only is bias inescapable but it's a good thing from the point of view of epistemological efficiency. In plain terms this means that human beings are better off when quite often they rely on their biases as they judge the world and their fellows around them. Part of why this may be so is that it's impossible to know all the relevant information pertaining to an issue; so relying on certain habits of mind formed by one's past experiences--which gave one a bias or prejudice, though not necessarily an irrational one--is unavoidable and valuable. It is a mistake to believe, this thesis suggests, that anyone can be totally impartial when making significant judgments about the world.
So when Judge Sotomayor tells us, in the spirit of full disclosure and based on what contemporary psychology and epistemology teach, that someone with extensive experience of a culture and the people in it is probably more likely to reach more reliable--"better"--conclusions than someone who is utterly unfamiliar with these, she is saying something pretty simple and true. Yes, it may sound to some like excusing some kind of ethnic bias but it need by no means amount to that. And in the case of Judge Sotomayor, who in the very same talk she gave at UC Berkeley Law School--used to be called Boalt Hall--also insisted that every effort should be made to leave one's personal (including political) preferences outside the court room, making mention of what appears on any fair reading a simple attestation of a fact should not be taken as a grievous professional fault.
A scholar I respect a great deal compared the admission of bias on the part of Judge Sotomayor to such an admission by other professionals whose skill is vital to the performance of their tasks. This scholar noted that if Judge Sotomayor were a brain surgeon or some other medical specialist, there would be no mention of empathy as any sort of professional qualification.
Yet even in the field of medicine we are often concerned with "bedside manners"--which boils down to what are called people skills--on the part of healthcare professionals. I can personally testify that when a doctor who is working to improve one's health treats a patient with total indifference, as if the patient were some kind of inanimate object rolling by on a conveyor belt instead of a human being with concerns and fears and such, this is not welcome and I can only assume that in the evaluation of such a professional it would make a difference--though by no means substitute for professional, skill, competence, or excellence.
I am no expert on who is or is not qualified to sit on the U. S. Supreme Court but I suspect that some of the reservations I have encountered in the media--voiced by various conservative commentators and even legal theorists--is something of a reach. I would be much happier if the dispute about Judge Sotomayor focused on her legal proficiency and not on her perhaps not to well expressed concern about showing a deep understanding of those standing before judges across the legal landscape.
Do All of us Expect to be Millionaires?
Tibor R. Machan
Sunday is the day when even profit making broadcasters must do service or pro bono work. And this mostly consists of broadcasting programs misleadingly labelled "public affairs." (I say this because none of these programs is actually about what matters to everyone, to the public, but only to one or another special interest group and, mostly to bureaucrats and their groupies.)
On May 30th there was such a program on ABC-TV's Los Angeles station, KABC, called "ABC7 Presents: California's Financial Crisis." I took in some of this but, believe me, it is only worth your time and effort if you need to write and talk about such things professionally. Sure, just a bit of it would probably benefit some viewers since they would witness just how inept most of these folks are. That might lead them to start reassessing their own willingness to rely on such people to give leadership to anything that's of concern to them. They show no skills that would indicate any such qualification, I assure you.
But some of what these folks say can serve as points of reference as one embarks on learning about how government is administered. What kind of thinking goes on in the minds of such folks? And does such thinking give any indication that they will be wise and virtuous enough to be California's rulers? (Yes, I said "rulers" because that is what they do vis-a-vis the rest of us, lay down and enforce thousands of rules they pretend will set things right.)
Take, for example, some comments made by Laura Chick, California's Inspector General. But before I get to that, just consider this woman's title: Inspector General! Is that an office anyone ought to hold in a genuinely free country? I think the answer isn't difficult to arrive at.
Ms. Chick was laying out her very original insight that greed is the source of our troubles. Then she added this gem about what brought on the current financial mess: "We all were planning to become millionaires." No data provided, not even some unofficial survey about what people want when it comes to their economic lives. Nada, just an unsupported, reckless announcement about us all.
Sure, there may be some people whose aim in life is to turn into millionaires, most likely, however, the bulk of those who do become millionaires--and I do know one or two such people--did not and still do not have being a millionaire as their goal. They wanted to do well professionally, running a business or working in an interesting field, and the matter of their anticipated earnings and wealth came later. For those who are in the wealth care profession, professionals in business, garnering a good return on the investments they make for their clients and for themselves does occupy a major focus of attention but even most of these folks tend to have numerous other aims in life, relating to family, friends, various causes they want to see flourish, etc.
It is not the case that most people are consumed with greed or, indeed, any other vice, even if virtually all of us dip into some vices throughout our lives but only out of neglect or bad judgment, not as a devotion, as Mr. Chick and her types appear to suggest. But maybe the reason they so readily ascribe greed to us all is that their idea of greed isn't being obsessive about acquiring great wealth at virtually any expense, including their integrity. No the idea of greed these people seem to have in their minds came across during this discussion rather clearly and it was a shocker.
Nobel Laureate Woody Clark--who is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and an economist concerned with climate change as well as with California's "hydrogen freeway" project--gave the clearest expression of this peculiar notion of greed when he said that when people do not support higher taxes--as for example the majority of voters in California's recent referenda clearly did not--they are being greedy. (Sure, since most of them refuse to fund the projects he loves!) So greed means, for these folks, not wanting to hand over a goodly portion of their earnings to politicians, bureaucrats, and their little helpers to do with as these folks want but to keep it to do with as they want.
If that is greed, folks, then of course nearly every sane citizen is consumed with greed--I certainly am. I like to spend my own earnings on goals I have come to find worthwhile, including some personally satisfying goodies but also my children's education and enjoyment, as well as to benefit various charities around the world, especially when disasters strike. That is, I guess, how I manage to be greedy, according to Ms. Chick and Mr. Clark.
As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break." But I am glad these remarks were made on this serious Sunday "public affairs" forum--held, by the way, at the Milken Institute the directors of which aren't reputed to be wild about relying on government to manage our affairs. That way at least those who take the time to check out how these folks think can learn that there really is no hope in trusting them to do any good for anyone, let alone for "the public."
Tibor R. Machan
Sunday is the day when even profit making broadcasters must do service or pro bono work. And this mostly consists of broadcasting programs misleadingly labelled "public affairs." (I say this because none of these programs is actually about what matters to everyone, to the public, but only to one or another special interest group and, mostly to bureaucrats and their groupies.)
On May 30th there was such a program on ABC-TV's Los Angeles station, KABC, called "ABC7 Presents: California's Financial Crisis." I took in some of this but, believe me, it is only worth your time and effort if you need to write and talk about such things professionally. Sure, just a bit of it would probably benefit some viewers since they would witness just how inept most of these folks are. That might lead them to start reassessing their own willingness to rely on such people to give leadership to anything that's of concern to them. They show no skills that would indicate any such qualification, I assure you.
But some of what these folks say can serve as points of reference as one embarks on learning about how government is administered. What kind of thinking goes on in the minds of such folks? And does such thinking give any indication that they will be wise and virtuous enough to be California's rulers? (Yes, I said "rulers" because that is what they do vis-a-vis the rest of us, lay down and enforce thousands of rules they pretend will set things right.)
Take, for example, some comments made by Laura Chick, California's Inspector General. But before I get to that, just consider this woman's title: Inspector General! Is that an office anyone ought to hold in a genuinely free country? I think the answer isn't difficult to arrive at.
Ms. Chick was laying out her very original insight that greed is the source of our troubles. Then she added this gem about what brought on the current financial mess: "We all were planning to become millionaires." No data provided, not even some unofficial survey about what people want when it comes to their economic lives. Nada, just an unsupported, reckless announcement about us all.
Sure, there may be some people whose aim in life is to turn into millionaires, most likely, however, the bulk of those who do become millionaires--and I do know one or two such people--did not and still do not have being a millionaire as their goal. They wanted to do well professionally, running a business or working in an interesting field, and the matter of their anticipated earnings and wealth came later. For those who are in the wealth care profession, professionals in business, garnering a good return on the investments they make for their clients and for themselves does occupy a major focus of attention but even most of these folks tend to have numerous other aims in life, relating to family, friends, various causes they want to see flourish, etc.
It is not the case that most people are consumed with greed or, indeed, any other vice, even if virtually all of us dip into some vices throughout our lives but only out of neglect or bad judgment, not as a devotion, as Mr. Chick and her types appear to suggest. But maybe the reason they so readily ascribe greed to us all is that their idea of greed isn't being obsessive about acquiring great wealth at virtually any expense, including their integrity. No the idea of greed these people seem to have in their minds came across during this discussion rather clearly and it was a shocker.
Nobel Laureate Woody Clark--who is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and an economist concerned with climate change as well as with California's "hydrogen freeway" project--gave the clearest expression of this peculiar notion of greed when he said that when people do not support higher taxes--as for example the majority of voters in California's recent referenda clearly did not--they are being greedy. (Sure, since most of them refuse to fund the projects he loves!) So greed means, for these folks, not wanting to hand over a goodly portion of their earnings to politicians, bureaucrats, and their little helpers to do with as these folks want but to keep it to do with as they want.
If that is greed, folks, then of course nearly every sane citizen is consumed with greed--I certainly am. I like to spend my own earnings on goals I have come to find worthwhile, including some personally satisfying goodies but also my children's education and enjoyment, as well as to benefit various charities around the world, especially when disasters strike. That is, I guess, how I manage to be greedy, according to Ms. Chick and Mr. Clark.
As John Stossel would say, "Give me a break." But I am glad these remarks were made on this serious Sunday "public affairs" forum--held, by the way, at the Milken Institute the directors of which aren't reputed to be wild about relying on government to manage our affairs. That way at least those who take the time to check out how these folks think can learn that there really is no hope in trusting them to do any good for anyone, let alone for "the public."
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Education and Philosophical versus Political Correctness
Tibor R. Machan
You will know what I am after here when I tell you how much I dislike it when people talk of "her majesty" or "his highness" as they talk of various pretenders to heads of countries around the globe and throughout human history. For me such terms are like ones out of faerie tales because, well, there are no kings or queens or any such thing except in myths. In other words kings are really not what they pretend to be, namely, God's chosen leaders here on earth. As with all in-born status that places some above others not in height or even talent but in political authority--some may rule and others will be ruled--the whole monarchical idea is a lie. Yet even now one can encounter references to these pretenders, right here in the United States of America, as if they were the real McCoy! Poppycock, I say. Was it not the American Founders who participated in the revolution that demoted these pretenders, who showed that world that no one is by nature the ruler of someone else?
Of course in all of history, wherever there have been human inhabitants, such pretentious ruses and the accompanying distortions of language have been ubiquitous. It is not so much that the thought of it ought to be banned by law. No ideas should be regarded as subject to censorship, which is the ultimate objective of construing certain ideas as politically incorrect. The Pope, the Reverend Moon, Father this and Sister that--all these are titles dependent on a dubious narrative, Most of them are offices with no rational reason for them. But the idea of them all, however debatable, has to be tolerated in a free country, even if those ideas are a threat to the freedom that's so central to such a country. Yes, then, folks ought to give them all up, just as they have given up superstitions of any sort. But this has to happen through enlightenment, education, reflection, conversation and other peaceful means, not through government intervention. A free country defers to the market place of ideas when it comes to what ideas will be deemed worthy of embrace. So, for example, it should not be government that chooses between creationism and Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, any more than it should be government that chooses between one or another religion or ethics.
It is another thing, however, for citizens themselves, independently of government, to consider some ideas philosophically incorrect. Just what is and what is not will, of course, be subject to eternal disputation, especially in societies where ideas of any kind have the protection of the legal system. Even racist ideas, even anti-Semitic ones, indeed any kind of bigotry must be given legal protection and their criticism needs to be confined to argumentation, ostracism, disputation, debate and such.
There is just one big problem with this. When a country tries to combine freedom of thought and speech with government administered education there will be irresolvable conflict. In a system of private education competition among schools would take care of philosophical correctness. In some schools certain books will be featured in the library, in others they will not, and students and their parents will be able to select which they want to be exposed to.
But when government delivers a coercive system of "education"--actually mostly indoctrination, since no alternative is available to the bulk of us who have to pay for and use such a system--any selection of books, magazines, films shown in classes and so forth will amount to implicit censorship of the materials not chosen. They will be deemed as having been banned--whereas in a private system selection by the administrators of some schools and library officials will not preclude exclusion by others. It is government's one-size-fits-all approach to education that stands in the way of free inquiry.
Unfortunately, in many societies people want to mix elements of liberty with elements of coercion, as if that were something trouble free. It isn't--the courts will struggle forever with trying to square that circle. Only by getting government out of education can that matter be made consistent with the principles of a free society and fit for human beings whose minds must forever be free to think.
Tibor R. Machan
You will know what I am after here when I tell you how much I dislike it when people talk of "her majesty" or "his highness" as they talk of various pretenders to heads of countries around the globe and throughout human history. For me such terms are like ones out of faerie tales because, well, there are no kings or queens or any such thing except in myths. In other words kings are really not what they pretend to be, namely, God's chosen leaders here on earth. As with all in-born status that places some above others not in height or even talent but in political authority--some may rule and others will be ruled--the whole monarchical idea is a lie. Yet even now one can encounter references to these pretenders, right here in the United States of America, as if they were the real McCoy! Poppycock, I say. Was it not the American Founders who participated in the revolution that demoted these pretenders, who showed that world that no one is by nature the ruler of someone else?
Of course in all of history, wherever there have been human inhabitants, such pretentious ruses and the accompanying distortions of language have been ubiquitous. It is not so much that the thought of it ought to be banned by law. No ideas should be regarded as subject to censorship, which is the ultimate objective of construing certain ideas as politically incorrect. The Pope, the Reverend Moon, Father this and Sister that--all these are titles dependent on a dubious narrative, Most of them are offices with no rational reason for them. But the idea of them all, however debatable, has to be tolerated in a free country, even if those ideas are a threat to the freedom that's so central to such a country. Yes, then, folks ought to give them all up, just as they have given up superstitions of any sort. But this has to happen through enlightenment, education, reflection, conversation and other peaceful means, not through government intervention. A free country defers to the market place of ideas when it comes to what ideas will be deemed worthy of embrace. So, for example, it should not be government that chooses between creationism and Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, any more than it should be government that chooses between one or another religion or ethics.
It is another thing, however, for citizens themselves, independently of government, to consider some ideas philosophically incorrect. Just what is and what is not will, of course, be subject to eternal disputation, especially in societies where ideas of any kind have the protection of the legal system. Even racist ideas, even anti-Semitic ones, indeed any kind of bigotry must be given legal protection and their criticism needs to be confined to argumentation, ostracism, disputation, debate and such.
There is just one big problem with this. When a country tries to combine freedom of thought and speech with government administered education there will be irresolvable conflict. In a system of private education competition among schools would take care of philosophical correctness. In some schools certain books will be featured in the library, in others they will not, and students and their parents will be able to select which they want to be exposed to.
But when government delivers a coercive system of "education"--actually mostly indoctrination, since no alternative is available to the bulk of us who have to pay for and use such a system--any selection of books, magazines, films shown in classes and so forth will amount to implicit censorship of the materials not chosen. They will be deemed as having been banned--whereas in a private system selection by the administrators of some schools and library officials will not preclude exclusion by others. It is government's one-size-fits-all approach to education that stands in the way of free inquiry.
Unfortunately, in many societies people want to mix elements of liberty with elements of coercion, as if that were something trouble free. It isn't--the courts will struggle forever with trying to square that circle. Only by getting government out of education can that matter be made consistent with the principles of a free society and fit for human beings whose minds must forever be free to think.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
One Size Fits All--Not Really
Tibor Machan
The current--May 23, 2009--issue of Science News is celebrating astronomy and the 400 years of the telescope. And they are all very enthusiastic about it over there at the magazine, so much so that a guest editorial by David H. DeVorkin, senior curator for astronomy and the space sciences at the National Air and Space Museum, is featured seriously promoting the idea that “every person on Earth should look at the night sky through a telescope in 2009, as Galileo did 400 years earlier.” This was a declaration put forth back in 2006, in all earnestness, by Rick Fienberg, former editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.
OK, it is a fine thing indeed that there are enthusiasts like Mr. Fienberg and Mr. DeVorkin in the field of astronomy, just as it is a fine thing indeed that there are enthusiasts in all the sciences and technologies human beings have embarked upon over the centuries. Except for one thing.
This is that such enthusiasts seem too often to convince themselves, without a scintilla of hesitation and skepticism, that everyone else must join them in their excitement about their field. This is a bit like those basketball or baseball or tennis fans who are convinced that their sport is the tops and people who don’t share this outlook must somehow be suffering from a serious blind spot.
It is folks like that, especially outside sports--which, after all, are normally understood as but forms of entertainment and tend to amount to a person’s idiosyncratic preference--who insist that what they are enthusiastic about everyone ought to support and, worst of all, be taxed to fund. These are the people who when a new president moves into the White House have already filled the mailbox there with letters insisting that it is absolutely vital that the object of their enthusiasm gain greater and greater public funding--i. e., get funded at other people’s expense.
So as to make this palatable, these folks will insist that what they are after is in the public interest, not anything for the benefit of private individuals or special interest groups. You wonder what nudges a country toward economic bankruptcy! It is this blindness, this belief that everyone’s object of enthusiasm is deserving of everyone else’s even unwilling support, never mind whether they share the enthusiasm.
No doubt much of what such enthusiasts are excited about is not only interesting but often enough useful, at least eventually. No doubt, too, that astronomy is a great field of study, as are hundreds of others that may just now bear little practical fruit. Nor is it the case that only what does bear such fruit is worth investigation.
But no enthusiast has any right, any moral authority, to compel the rest of us to share his or her choice for what is most vital in human life, in communities, in the world. If they cannot convinced others of the merits of their field of interest, enough so that it will gain material support as a matter of voluntary consent, then they have come to a dead end, morally and politically. Going on to insist that other people’s priorities ought to be subjugated to theirs, that they may dip into other people’s resources even if not welcomed to do so, that is not mere enthusiasm, devotion to a worthy cause. That is, quite simply, larcenous, the unjust expropriation of what belongs to others.
I know that when it comes to these noble goals, it isn’t supposed to matter that each of us has his or her own agenda, goals we value and want to back. Self-sacrifice is deemed to be so elevating, even if one doesn’t engage in it of one’s own free will but at the point of the government’s guns.
But that is simply false. So the enthusiasts need to learn how to go out and raise voluntary support or turn to other pursuits that they can afford and for which they do not need rob and steal from others.
Tibor Machan
The current--May 23, 2009--issue of Science News is celebrating astronomy and the 400 years of the telescope. And they are all very enthusiastic about it over there at the magazine, so much so that a guest editorial by David H. DeVorkin, senior curator for astronomy and the space sciences at the National Air and Space Museum, is featured seriously promoting the idea that “every person on Earth should look at the night sky through a telescope in 2009, as Galileo did 400 years earlier.” This was a declaration put forth back in 2006, in all earnestness, by Rick Fienberg, former editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.
OK, it is a fine thing indeed that there are enthusiasts like Mr. Fienberg and Mr. DeVorkin in the field of astronomy, just as it is a fine thing indeed that there are enthusiasts in all the sciences and technologies human beings have embarked upon over the centuries. Except for one thing.
This is that such enthusiasts seem too often to convince themselves, without a scintilla of hesitation and skepticism, that everyone else must join them in their excitement about their field. This is a bit like those basketball or baseball or tennis fans who are convinced that their sport is the tops and people who don’t share this outlook must somehow be suffering from a serious blind spot.
It is folks like that, especially outside sports--which, after all, are normally understood as but forms of entertainment and tend to amount to a person’s idiosyncratic preference--who insist that what they are enthusiastic about everyone ought to support and, worst of all, be taxed to fund. These are the people who when a new president moves into the White House have already filled the mailbox there with letters insisting that it is absolutely vital that the object of their enthusiasm gain greater and greater public funding--i. e., get funded at other people’s expense.
So as to make this palatable, these folks will insist that what they are after is in the public interest, not anything for the benefit of private individuals or special interest groups. You wonder what nudges a country toward economic bankruptcy! It is this blindness, this belief that everyone’s object of enthusiasm is deserving of everyone else’s even unwilling support, never mind whether they share the enthusiasm.
No doubt much of what such enthusiasts are excited about is not only interesting but often enough useful, at least eventually. No doubt, too, that astronomy is a great field of study, as are hundreds of others that may just now bear little practical fruit. Nor is it the case that only what does bear such fruit is worth investigation.
But no enthusiast has any right, any moral authority, to compel the rest of us to share his or her choice for what is most vital in human life, in communities, in the world. If they cannot convinced others of the merits of their field of interest, enough so that it will gain material support as a matter of voluntary consent, then they have come to a dead end, morally and politically. Going on to insist that other people’s priorities ought to be subjugated to theirs, that they may dip into other people’s resources even if not welcomed to do so, that is not mere enthusiasm, devotion to a worthy cause. That is, quite simply, larcenous, the unjust expropriation of what belongs to others.
I know that when it comes to these noble goals, it isn’t supposed to matter that each of us has his or her own agenda, goals we value and want to back. Self-sacrifice is deemed to be so elevating, even if one doesn’t engage in it of one’s own free will but at the point of the government’s guns.
But that is simply false. So the enthusiasts need to learn how to go out and raise voluntary support or turn to other pursuits that they can afford and for which they do not need rob and steal from others.
Invitation to Altruism (Again)
Tibor R. Machan
It was when I was in college at Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College that John F. Kennedy got elected president. Very handsome guy, really Camelot in spades, no denying that! But something seemed rotten underneath all that democratic royalty, at least to me. As time went by, Kennedy started to loose the halo around his scull, what with his infidelities and his rather inept political maneuverings, not to mention his detestable holier than though statism. Had he not been so tragically assassinated and thus, like a martyr, gained much unearned adoration from a great number of sympathetic American citizens, he would very likely have turned out to be a politician kind of like Gary Hart--lots of flash but little substance.
When Kennedy came out with his famous, "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; as what you can do for your country," I didn't approve of it at all. I believed then as I still do that this sentiment belonged not in a free country but a totalitarian one, in Hitler's Third Reich, for example, or in ancient Sparta. How dare anyone write off the lives of millions of human beings as having as their life's purposes nothing but service to the government (or state)?
Well, very unfortunately, we are back to this once again. The New Republic published a special insert in its June 3, 2009, issue, titled "The Forgotten Masterpieces of Henry Fairlie" (pp. 14-15). One of these alleged gems ends as follows: "Ideas in politics must sometimes go underground for a while; the time is not favorable to them. But underground they gather new energy and still work their way into the roots of the nation's life, until the people again feel the need for them. One day some new president will find other words to summon the people from their private pursuits to remember their obligations to the Union, the Republic, the Res Publica--the state." These lines were written February 3, 1986, just around the time Ronald Reagan reminded us that government isn't the solution but the problem. Mr. Fairlie makes no bones about preferring Kennedy's idea--which harks back to that of most Pharaohs and Caesars with its insidious demeaning of the value of the lives of individuals--to that of Mr. Reagan; nor did The New Republic dig up the Fairlie quote by accident. Clearly the editors meant to tell readers that now, with the presidency of the new Kennedy, Barack Obama, we may be able to reorient the country in the direction where people will swallow the myth that their lives belong to the state.
And TNR's editors are not alone. Numerous books, written by political theorists housed in very prestigious academic institutions, have recently given philosophical meat to the reactionary statism and altruism Kennedy and Mr. Fairlie champion. Peter Singer, the animal liberation activist at Princeton University's department of philosophy, is one of the most voracious advocates of altruism, so much so that he wants people to sacrifice themselves for other non-human living beings whose liberation he considers a priority! There is also Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy who believe that the state owns everything and it is by its permission that we get to use a bit of it for our well being. Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor who used to have Mr. Obama as a part time colleague at the University of Chicago and now heads up the regulatory regime of the new pres, advocates that we have no rights by virtue of our human nature but only because the government grants us some.
The era in which the American Founders' notion--that government exists to serve individual citizens who have fundamental, inalienable rights no one can take from them and which the government exists to secure for them--has come under serious attack on all fronts. It is frightening. Let us not fiddle while Rome burns, please, let us not!
Tibor R. Machan
It was when I was in college at Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College that John F. Kennedy got elected president. Very handsome guy, really Camelot in spades, no denying that! But something seemed rotten underneath all that democratic royalty, at least to me. As time went by, Kennedy started to loose the halo around his scull, what with his infidelities and his rather inept political maneuverings, not to mention his detestable holier than though statism. Had he not been so tragically assassinated and thus, like a martyr, gained much unearned adoration from a great number of sympathetic American citizens, he would very likely have turned out to be a politician kind of like Gary Hart--lots of flash but little substance.
When Kennedy came out with his famous, "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; as what you can do for your country," I didn't approve of it at all. I believed then as I still do that this sentiment belonged not in a free country but a totalitarian one, in Hitler's Third Reich, for example, or in ancient Sparta. How dare anyone write off the lives of millions of human beings as having as their life's purposes nothing but service to the government (or state)?
Well, very unfortunately, we are back to this once again. The New Republic published a special insert in its June 3, 2009, issue, titled "The Forgotten Masterpieces of Henry Fairlie" (pp. 14-15). One of these alleged gems ends as follows: "Ideas in politics must sometimes go underground for a while; the time is not favorable to them. But underground they gather new energy and still work their way into the roots of the nation's life, until the people again feel the need for them. One day some new president will find other words to summon the people from their private pursuits to remember their obligations to the Union, the Republic, the Res Publica--the state." These lines were written February 3, 1986, just around the time Ronald Reagan reminded us that government isn't the solution but the problem. Mr. Fairlie makes no bones about preferring Kennedy's idea--which harks back to that of most Pharaohs and Caesars with its insidious demeaning of the value of the lives of individuals--to that of Mr. Reagan; nor did The New Republic dig up the Fairlie quote by accident. Clearly the editors meant to tell readers that now, with the presidency of the new Kennedy, Barack Obama, we may be able to reorient the country in the direction where people will swallow the myth that their lives belong to the state.
And TNR's editors are not alone. Numerous books, written by political theorists housed in very prestigious academic institutions, have recently given philosophical meat to the reactionary statism and altruism Kennedy and Mr. Fairlie champion. Peter Singer, the animal liberation activist at Princeton University's department of philosophy, is one of the most voracious advocates of altruism, so much so that he wants people to sacrifice themselves for other non-human living beings whose liberation he considers a priority! There is also Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy who believe that the state owns everything and it is by its permission that we get to use a bit of it for our well being. Cass Sunstein, the Harvard Law professor who used to have Mr. Obama as a part time colleague at the University of Chicago and now heads up the regulatory regime of the new pres, advocates that we have no rights by virtue of our human nature but only because the government grants us some.
The era in which the American Founders' notion--that government exists to serve individual citizens who have fundamental, inalienable rights no one can take from them and which the government exists to secure for them--has come under serious attack on all fronts. It is frightening. Let us not fiddle while Rome burns, please, let us not!
Monday, May 25, 2009
Power Really Does Corrupt As it Expands
Tibor R. Machan
Lord Acton, the British historian is widely known for at least one of his observations. This is that "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Acton made this observation amidst a whole lot of insights and analyses that have gone down as the treasures of late classical liberal political thought. His most famous insight has by now become a cliche, a truth that we all know even if we fail to heed it in our daily lives and public affairs.
It is for this reason, among others, that the works of such contemporary libertarians as Professor Robert Higgs are so vital--they give substance to Acton's cliche, if you will, in such books as Crisis and Leviathan (Oxford University Press, 1989), where Higgs demonstrates with umpteen historical examples just how much governments that acquire power during so called emergencies and with the explanation--or excuse--that this power is simply needed to cope with the emergency mostly keep and expand that power after the emergency has stopped and been handled (usually without the need for the expanded powers of governments).
Most of us do not have the time and inclination to do the historical research that a scholar like Higgs makes his daily occupation despite the fact that without a solid background in the study of such history most of us become the gullible pawns of politicians and their academic cheerleaders (of which there are simply a lot more than academics who unearth the nuggets of knowledge that shows us how vicious and useless the use of power is in human affairs). We are just now witnessing exactly what Professor Higgs and some others have pointed out through most of their careers.
Take, for example, Christopher A. Preble, a former commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy and now the director of foreign policy studies at the Washington, DC, Cato Institute, whose recently published The Power Problem (Cornell University Press, 2009) revisits some of the territory Higgs has mined but with a focus on very current foreign and military affairs. The preamble to the book is itself worth its price. It is a quotation from General Colin Powell's My American Journey. Power reports that "Madeleine Albright, our Ambassador to the UN, asked me on frustration 'What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?' I thought," Powell goes on to comment, "I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board."
Albright's obscenity does not by any means stand as a rare instance. I personally attended a speech given by Irving Kristol, the godfather of the neo-conservative political movement and a powerful influence in Washington, DC, where Kristol advanced the idea that a country needs a little war now and then so as to light the spirit of its young men! And this talk was the keynote speech for the Philadelphia Society several years ago, before either of the Iraq wars got under way. (A friend of mine who has worked in the field of political philosophy and, in particular, on just war theory, told me after he heard Kristol that it was one of the very few times in his life that he was tempted to physically assault someone for what his speechifying!)
The sad truth is that the power problem is completely non-partisan and today it is President Obama and his team who are churning out rationalizations for building up Washington's arsenal of bureaucracy, with its massive weaponry given by Congress. Although the American Founders had hoped that their arrangement of power in the capitol of the nation would manage to contain the beast, in fact they miscalculated. And what was to be a bone fide free country, with a strictly limited government--limited via the Constitution and various devices of separation of powers--the United States has gravitated from being a promise of liberty for all to a promise of power to a rather large political sector.
It would be a great project to cut this power back to its proper scope and size!
Tibor R. Machan
Lord Acton, the British historian is widely known for at least one of his observations. This is that "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Acton made this observation amidst a whole lot of insights and analyses that have gone down as the treasures of late classical liberal political thought. His most famous insight has by now become a cliche, a truth that we all know even if we fail to heed it in our daily lives and public affairs.
It is for this reason, among others, that the works of such contemporary libertarians as Professor Robert Higgs are so vital--they give substance to Acton's cliche, if you will, in such books as Crisis and Leviathan (Oxford University Press, 1989), where Higgs demonstrates with umpteen historical examples just how much governments that acquire power during so called emergencies and with the explanation--or excuse--that this power is simply needed to cope with the emergency mostly keep and expand that power after the emergency has stopped and been handled (usually without the need for the expanded powers of governments).
Most of us do not have the time and inclination to do the historical research that a scholar like Higgs makes his daily occupation despite the fact that without a solid background in the study of such history most of us become the gullible pawns of politicians and their academic cheerleaders (of which there are simply a lot more than academics who unearth the nuggets of knowledge that shows us how vicious and useless the use of power is in human affairs). We are just now witnessing exactly what Professor Higgs and some others have pointed out through most of their careers.
Take, for example, Christopher A. Preble, a former commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy and now the director of foreign policy studies at the Washington, DC, Cato Institute, whose recently published The Power Problem (Cornell University Press, 2009) revisits some of the territory Higgs has mined but with a focus on very current foreign and military affairs. The preamble to the book is itself worth its price. It is a quotation from General Colin Powell's My American Journey. Power reports that "Madeleine Albright, our Ambassador to the UN, asked me on frustration 'What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?' I thought," Powell goes on to comment, "I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board."
Albright's obscenity does not by any means stand as a rare instance. I personally attended a speech given by Irving Kristol, the godfather of the neo-conservative political movement and a powerful influence in Washington, DC, where Kristol advanced the idea that a country needs a little war now and then so as to light the spirit of its young men! And this talk was the keynote speech for the Philadelphia Society several years ago, before either of the Iraq wars got under way. (A friend of mine who has worked in the field of political philosophy and, in particular, on just war theory, told me after he heard Kristol that it was one of the very few times in his life that he was tempted to physically assault someone for what his speechifying!)
The sad truth is that the power problem is completely non-partisan and today it is President Obama and his team who are churning out rationalizations for building up Washington's arsenal of bureaucracy, with its massive weaponry given by Congress. Although the American Founders had hoped that their arrangement of power in the capitol of the nation would manage to contain the beast, in fact they miscalculated. And what was to be a bone fide free country, with a strictly limited government--limited via the Constitution and various devices of separation of powers--the United States has gravitated from being a promise of liberty for all to a promise of power to a rather large political sector.
It would be a great project to cut this power back to its proper scope and size!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Are There Basic Principles?
Tibor R. Machan
Some of President Obama's recent speeches have raised a vital issue that often lies in the background of particular policy discussions. For example, the president has made it abundantly clear that he is a pragmatist, especially about economic matters. (He does not appear to be pragmatic about waterboarding or torture, more generally!) And there is a perennial question involved here: Are there any permanent, lasting, stable principles of human life, including ethics and politics?
Some, of course, will immediately invoke God and Biblical pronouncements. But this doesn't settle anything since among human beings there are really quite a few religions and some have very different ideas about morality and politics. Which of these is to be treated as fundamental? Within each religion the answer is easy enough but when we have numerous religions facing us, how do we choose? Some answer this by talking about faith. Yet faith, sadly, varies too much among us and has the problem of not offering a common basis. Which is why there are so many different faiths. And while the sciences are often in dispute, also, at least in principle they adhere to a common method, one accessible to anyone who isn't afflicted with some malady.
Apart from religion, then, are there fundamental truths? Over the long history of human thought few principles have remained unchanging excepting very few. I am thinking here of the principles of logic. Very few people, very few schools of thought, dispute that logic is fundamental to everything. In every discipline, in every concern of ours, if one makes a logical mistake one's case crumbles. Just think of the courtroom where if a witness is caught in a contradiction, his or her testimony is immediately discredited. Why? Because a contradiction is impossible--reality will not tolerate it. A thing is what it is, no exception! Nothing can both have and at the same time lack a property or feature--it's got to be one or the other.
But logic is so general in its scope that it doesn't point to very specific information. All it says is that whatever we know, it cannot violate the laws of logic. Is there anything more specific that is stable, lasting? For example, what about the principles of ethics? Or the U. S. Constitution? Are these simply some matters that hold fast for some people but others are exempt? For example, is torture really altogether unacceptable, evil? Or is that only given American values? Are those values applicable to all human communities? Why?
The answer the American Founders and their followers have given is that the basic principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are pretty close to being indeed applicable to all human communities because, well, they rest on human nature, something that is stable, lasting in the world. Yes, there are disputes but they are all conducted with the expectation that some right answer will be found. (Consider a recent book by the Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate. It defends the idea of a reasonably permanent human nature. And consider common sense, also. After all, we still read the works of human beings from centuries ago, just as if they were working from within the very same frame of reference, with but minor variations, from which we work!)
So long as we are consider human affairs, there will be some principles that will be basic simply because we are dealing with a fairly stable part of the world. And that's so, also, with other fields of inquiry and knowledge; we may be quite ignorant about much of what makes up the world, some of it we have managed to grasp pretty well--at least when we make use of the knowledge we seem to meet with considerable success in, say, medicine, farming, manufacture, building, even child-raising!
So, yes, there are some principles we have managed to identify over the span of human history that are stable, lasting enough, so we should hang on to them unless there are very, very good reasons to change our minds. And some of these principles may be economic ones, so being entirely pragmatic about economics, as Mr. Obama insists on being, is not a good idea--it tosses overboard centuries of learning in that field of human knowledge.
Tibor R. Machan
Some of President Obama's recent speeches have raised a vital issue that often lies in the background of particular policy discussions. For example, the president has made it abundantly clear that he is a pragmatist, especially about economic matters. (He does not appear to be pragmatic about waterboarding or torture, more generally!) And there is a perennial question involved here: Are there any permanent, lasting, stable principles of human life, including ethics and politics?
Some, of course, will immediately invoke God and Biblical pronouncements. But this doesn't settle anything since among human beings there are really quite a few religions and some have very different ideas about morality and politics. Which of these is to be treated as fundamental? Within each religion the answer is easy enough but when we have numerous religions facing us, how do we choose? Some answer this by talking about faith. Yet faith, sadly, varies too much among us and has the problem of not offering a common basis. Which is why there are so many different faiths. And while the sciences are often in dispute, also, at least in principle they adhere to a common method, one accessible to anyone who isn't afflicted with some malady.
Apart from religion, then, are there fundamental truths? Over the long history of human thought few principles have remained unchanging excepting very few. I am thinking here of the principles of logic. Very few people, very few schools of thought, dispute that logic is fundamental to everything. In every discipline, in every concern of ours, if one makes a logical mistake one's case crumbles. Just think of the courtroom where if a witness is caught in a contradiction, his or her testimony is immediately discredited. Why? Because a contradiction is impossible--reality will not tolerate it. A thing is what it is, no exception! Nothing can both have and at the same time lack a property or feature--it's got to be one or the other.
But logic is so general in its scope that it doesn't point to very specific information. All it says is that whatever we know, it cannot violate the laws of logic. Is there anything more specific that is stable, lasting? For example, what about the principles of ethics? Or the U. S. Constitution? Are these simply some matters that hold fast for some people but others are exempt? For example, is torture really altogether unacceptable, evil? Or is that only given American values? Are those values applicable to all human communities? Why?
The answer the American Founders and their followers have given is that the basic principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are pretty close to being indeed applicable to all human communities because, well, they rest on human nature, something that is stable, lasting in the world. Yes, there are disputes but they are all conducted with the expectation that some right answer will be found. (Consider a recent book by the Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate. It defends the idea of a reasonably permanent human nature. And consider common sense, also. After all, we still read the works of human beings from centuries ago, just as if they were working from within the very same frame of reference, with but minor variations, from which we work!)
So long as we are consider human affairs, there will be some principles that will be basic simply because we are dealing with a fairly stable part of the world. And that's so, also, with other fields of inquiry and knowledge; we may be quite ignorant about much of what makes up the world, some of it we have managed to grasp pretty well--at least when we make use of the knowledge we seem to meet with considerable success in, say, medicine, farming, manufacture, building, even child-raising!
So, yes, there are some principles we have managed to identify over the span of human history that are stable, lasting enough, so we should hang on to them unless there are very, very good reasons to change our minds. And some of these principles may be economic ones, so being entirely pragmatic about economics, as Mr. Obama insists on being, is not a good idea--it tosses overboard centuries of learning in that field of human knowledge.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Libertarianism Reaffirmed
Tibor R. Machan
So the other day I was awoken from my occasional complacency and shocked to be told that Glenn Beck, Fox TV's most recent addition of conservative commentators, has been calling himself a libertarian. Wow. That's all libertarianism needs, to have become the victim of this confusion or perhaps out and out distortion. Therefore let me spend a few paragraphs again on just what libertarianism is.
The libertarian political philosophy is defined as one according to which the most fundamental principle of public affairs, admitting of no official compromise, is that the right to individual liberty of everyone in society is the most precious value to be upheld, protected and promoted by the law. If you read the Declaration of Independence carefully, its basic theme is libertarianism, plain and simple. Everyone has basic, unalienable rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among other, less fundamental rights). This includes all men and women who carry on peacefully in their lives, however much their personal conduct may or may not conform to a given ethical or religious code. The political philosophy of libertarianism, along with the ideas sketched in the Declaration, are what a genuine free country is about.
Libertarianism is not an aesthetics, not a religion, not a personal ethical code, not even first and foremost an economic theory. Abraham Lincoln captured this when he said that "[The American system...] has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwined itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle 'Liberty for all'--the principle that clears the path to all--gives hope to all--and, by consequences, enterprise, and industry to all.”
One of the major elements of libertarianism, especially crucial to recall when considering whether conservatives are libertarians, is that it is committed to a purely defensive foreign and military policy for a county; no aggression is acceptable by the standards of a bona fide free country. (George Washington's farewell address, in which he warns about entanglements with foreign countries, is a precursor of libertarianism vis-a-vis foreign affairs.)
More germane to my motivating point here is that libertarianism tolerates no public policies that deny the right to liberty to any segment of society, none. And it refuses to let governments interfere with people's private conduct, including their ill advised private conduct such as the consumption of anything that can produce harm for them. That's not a political project in a free society. Nor is the prohibition of gambling, prostitution, tobacco smoking when this does not involve dumping harm on others, censorship, religious heretic-ism, nothing. It is all about individual liberty.
And it is this that makes libertarianism so revolutionary, so much the advancement of the achievements of the American founders, something that altered the focus and tone of public policy throughout the world. And this also explains why libertarianism is so difficult to promote, since the bulk of humanity was raised under regimes wherein the right to individual liberty was systematically denied. The governmental habit, which is so evident throughout American society today, not to mention elsewhere around the globe, is not easy to change. Too many people hope to gain advantages in life by forcibly--though not always brutally--imposing their ideas and ideals on others. (Recently supporters of such impositions have come up with a new term, "nudging," to serve their purpose of making their version of tyranny palatable.)
No, Mr. Beck is no libertarian. But no one in a free society is permitted to force him to change his corrupt use of the term. All that can be done is to engage in that eternal task of vigilance in support of the proper understanding of the free, libertarian society. Which also shows, clearly, why libertarianism is not utopian--it doesn't promise to solve political problems permanently. The defense of liberty can never end, never conclude in a final triumph.
Tibor R. Machan
So the other day I was awoken from my occasional complacency and shocked to be told that Glenn Beck, Fox TV's most recent addition of conservative commentators, has been calling himself a libertarian. Wow. That's all libertarianism needs, to have become the victim of this confusion or perhaps out and out distortion. Therefore let me spend a few paragraphs again on just what libertarianism is.
The libertarian political philosophy is defined as one according to which the most fundamental principle of public affairs, admitting of no official compromise, is that the right to individual liberty of everyone in society is the most precious value to be upheld, protected and promoted by the law. If you read the Declaration of Independence carefully, its basic theme is libertarianism, plain and simple. Everyone has basic, unalienable rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (among other, less fundamental rights). This includes all men and women who carry on peacefully in their lives, however much their personal conduct may or may not conform to a given ethical or religious code. The political philosophy of libertarianism, along with the ideas sketched in the Declaration, are what a genuine free country is about.
Libertarianism is not an aesthetics, not a religion, not a personal ethical code, not even first and foremost an economic theory. Abraham Lincoln captured this when he said that "[The American system...] has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwined itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle 'Liberty for all'--the principle that clears the path to all--gives hope to all--and, by consequences, enterprise, and industry to all.”
One of the major elements of libertarianism, especially crucial to recall when considering whether conservatives are libertarians, is that it is committed to a purely defensive foreign and military policy for a county; no aggression is acceptable by the standards of a bona fide free country. (George Washington's farewell address, in which he warns about entanglements with foreign countries, is a precursor of libertarianism vis-a-vis foreign affairs.)
More germane to my motivating point here is that libertarianism tolerates no public policies that deny the right to liberty to any segment of society, none. And it refuses to let governments interfere with people's private conduct, including their ill advised private conduct such as the consumption of anything that can produce harm for them. That's not a political project in a free society. Nor is the prohibition of gambling, prostitution, tobacco smoking when this does not involve dumping harm on others, censorship, religious heretic-ism, nothing. It is all about individual liberty.
And it is this that makes libertarianism so revolutionary, so much the advancement of the achievements of the American founders, something that altered the focus and tone of public policy throughout the world. And this also explains why libertarianism is so difficult to promote, since the bulk of humanity was raised under regimes wherein the right to individual liberty was systematically denied. The governmental habit, which is so evident throughout American society today, not to mention elsewhere around the globe, is not easy to change. Too many people hope to gain advantages in life by forcibly--though not always brutally--imposing their ideas and ideals on others. (Recently supporters of such impositions have come up with a new term, "nudging," to serve their purpose of making their version of tyranny palatable.)
No, Mr. Beck is no libertarian. But no one in a free society is permitted to force him to change his corrupt use of the term. All that can be done is to engage in that eternal task of vigilance in support of the proper understanding of the free, libertarian society. Which also shows, clearly, why libertarianism is not utopian--it doesn't promise to solve political problems permanently. The defense of liberty can never end, never conclude in a final triumph.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
"Rewards" of Determinism?
Tibor R. Machan
A few weeks ago I speculated on the motives of certain researchers at UCSB's new neuroscience center, suggesting that they are there's something "cooking at some of America's higher education institutions." The wording here can imply that those involved are up to no good or something a little circumspect, even devious. Someone to whom I showed this column as I was preparing it took issue with me. writing that what is suggested "leaves a bad taste. It patronizes hundreds of legal and moral scholars, which is especially unbecoming given that many of them (including those at UCSB, whom I know well) have already given enormous thought to the issues you raise, and are not in fact refuted by your attempted 'gotcha'."
Anytime in arguments among intellectuals motivations are introduced, one risks taking a false step. First, few people know why others champion a position on some controversial topic, although sometimes one can guess fairly well. Still, it is strictly speaking bad form to raise the issue of motives. (Yes, yes, it is done all the time but still, doing it can indeed leave a bad taste.)
Of course, the history of ideas is filled with discussions that do indeed impute questionable motives to one's adversary. Most notable is Karl Marx who in fact built the ascription of dubious motives to those whose views he criticized right smack into his theories. For example, he labeled those with whom he disagreed ideologues, meaning they invented respectable sounding ideas just to hide their true motives of wanting to exploit the workers and rule the realm. (In the end there wasn't a lot else to many of Marx's "arguments" but these kinds of ad hominems.)
As to the people I criticized and charged with being up to something, well, really, I don't know but a few personally. (A most famous early one of their ilk, the late Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner, was actually after gaining control over other people by his promotion of the notion of a technology of behavior!) Yet, I believe a little caution in considering the program at UCSB is in order. After all, the bulk of those who will be spending the $10 million grant their institute received are determinists, people who deny that we human beings have free will, can originate our ideas and actions and are moved by impersonal forces such as genes, neuron firings in the brain, environmental stimuli, etc.
What, you may wonder, could anyone gain from looking at people in this way, depriving them of control over their lives?
Several agenda's could be advanced by determinism. A good example comes to mind with the late Harvard University political philosopher, John Rawls, who championed a largely egalitarian society in part because, as he wrote in his famous book, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), "The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is ... problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit." Which then suggests that those who are well off couldn't have earned it, nor could anyone actually deserve any credit for what he or she has achieved. And such a view is taken by many to justify wealth redistribution, something often deemed best left to well educated men and women in government (often fetched out of academia).
Of course the opposite position, which ascribes freedom of the will to people (normally) has its own public policy suggestions, even perhaps implications, such as that the more deserving among us should have more power to rule, to set the society's priorities and obtain the "society's wealth." Indeed, as a libertarian I am often charged with being but a mouthpiece of the rich because in a free society there would be no justification for taking from those who are well off so as to benefit those who aren't. Not that this has anything to do with the merits or demerits of libertarianism but many people still insist that such a "gotcha" move is powerful in at least discrediting someone with a given position in political economic matters.
Still, arguably considering the motivation that leads someone to advance an argument the very ethics of sound scholarship and argumentation regards it best not to bother with it. What ought to count is whether someone's position is justified, not whether he or she may by chance achieve some hidden agenda by it.
Tibor R. Machan
A few weeks ago I speculated on the motives of certain researchers at UCSB's new neuroscience center, suggesting that they are there's something "cooking at some of America's higher education institutions." The wording here can imply that those involved are up to no good or something a little circumspect, even devious. Someone to whom I showed this column as I was preparing it took issue with me. writing that what is suggested "leaves a bad taste. It patronizes hundreds of legal and moral scholars, which is especially unbecoming given that many of them (including those at UCSB, whom I know well) have already given enormous thought to the issues you raise, and are not in fact refuted by your attempted 'gotcha'."
Anytime in arguments among intellectuals motivations are introduced, one risks taking a false step. First, few people know why others champion a position on some controversial topic, although sometimes one can guess fairly well. Still, it is strictly speaking bad form to raise the issue of motives. (Yes, yes, it is done all the time but still, doing it can indeed leave a bad taste.)
Of course, the history of ideas is filled with discussions that do indeed impute questionable motives to one's adversary. Most notable is Karl Marx who in fact built the ascription of dubious motives to those whose views he criticized right smack into his theories. For example, he labeled those with whom he disagreed ideologues, meaning they invented respectable sounding ideas just to hide their true motives of wanting to exploit the workers and rule the realm. (In the end there wasn't a lot else to many of Marx's "arguments" but these kinds of ad hominems.)
As to the people I criticized and charged with being up to something, well, really, I don't know but a few personally. (A most famous early one of their ilk, the late Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner, was actually after gaining control over other people by his promotion of the notion of a technology of behavior!) Yet, I believe a little caution in considering the program at UCSB is in order. After all, the bulk of those who will be spending the $10 million grant their institute received are determinists, people who deny that we human beings have free will, can originate our ideas and actions and are moved by impersonal forces such as genes, neuron firings in the brain, environmental stimuli, etc.
What, you may wonder, could anyone gain from looking at people in this way, depriving them of control over their lives?
Several agenda's could be advanced by determinism. A good example comes to mind with the late Harvard University political philosopher, John Rawls, who championed a largely egalitarian society in part because, as he wrote in his famous book, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), "The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is ... problematic; for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit." Which then suggests that those who are well off couldn't have earned it, nor could anyone actually deserve any credit for what he or she has achieved. And such a view is taken by many to justify wealth redistribution, something often deemed best left to well educated men and women in government (often fetched out of academia).
Of course the opposite position, which ascribes freedom of the will to people (normally) has its own public policy suggestions, even perhaps implications, such as that the more deserving among us should have more power to rule, to set the society's priorities and obtain the "society's wealth." Indeed, as a libertarian I am often charged with being but a mouthpiece of the rich because in a free society there would be no justification for taking from those who are well off so as to benefit those who aren't. Not that this has anything to do with the merits or demerits of libertarianism but many people still insist that such a "gotcha" move is powerful in at least discrediting someone with a given position in political economic matters.
Still, arguably considering the motivation that leads someone to advance an argument the very ethics of sound scholarship and argumentation regards it best not to bother with it. What ought to count is whether someone's position is justified, not whether he or she may by chance achieve some hidden agenda by it.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Paradoxes about Intruding on "Nature"
Tibor R. Machan
Whether this is deliberate I don't know, but many movies made for children these days have strong moralistic messages that say: We human beings are the scourge of the universe! The recently very popular production of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park onto the big screen is no exception even though the late author ended his life very skeptical about, for example, global warming alarmism. Steven Spielberg was, of course, the right candidate for bring off the earlier morality tale to screen--wasn't his ET, for example, another case of finger wagging at ordinary people for being so heartless and cruel as to want to study the creature from outer space rather than, well, cuddle it with no questions asked?
In the middle of Jurassic Park Jeff Goldblum's character, a mathematician, delivers the movie's moral message, just in case the action didn't manage to speak for itself: Any interference with the course of nature by human agency is mostly going to do harm to all concerned, so stop it, stupid! (How is it, by the way, that human nature isn't part of nature? Last I looked we were smack in the middle of it all, governed by the laws of nature to boot!) Thus when a wealthy Scott sets up the awesome park near Costa Rica featuring cloned prehistoric dinosaurs, all hell breaks loose. Never mind that there is really no reason given why this should have occurred, other than the idiocy and recklessness of one employee who seems to have been allowed to control the entire park without the slightest supervision. The lesson that we should have been given is: Don't allow loose cannons into your operations, they will muck things up.
Why is the intended message a silly one, despite how so many environmentalists mouth it regularly? Indeed, quite a few of them take part in efforts to save endangered species, ones that by the laws of nature, it would appear, are headed for extinction! The main reason is that human beings are themselves, of course, part of nature and what they can and will do can itself be evaluated as either healthful or harmful. Just because human beings interfere with nature via, say, antibiotics or pain killers or transplant operations, that itself does not show what they do to be all good or all bad. Each interference must itself be considered as either helpful or harmful. Just interference isn't the issue--after all, animals throughout the globe interfere with nature every time they devour one another, build a dam, pollinate, or reproduce.
Consider a quite recent discovery near the Great Lakes that if a good number of a parasite that has been killing other sea life there is sterilized by human beings, by way of injecting it with certain chemicals, the parasite will eventually be eradicated and the rest of the life in the lakes will begin to flourish again. Or consider, simply, Novocain or artificial limbs. All these and similar cases testify to the point that human interference with nature is often enough benign and should be encouraged.
No doubt human behavior is different from that of other living things because we have the unique attribute of free will and can act rightly and wrongly, with no guarantee against small or large mistakes. (Oddly a lot of scientists who worry about our interference in the wilds seem to think we do not have free will at all!) Thus for us it takes more than mere instincts to conduct ourselves successfully. But that is itself something in nature, the environmentalists' suggestion to the contrary notwithstanding. The idea that human beings are some sort of fungus or oddity in nature is wholly arbitrary and ignores the existence of enormous diversity throughout nature quite apart from us.
What I find of some concern is that so many adults keep trying to tell our children to distrust the only source of hope for the future, namely, sound human judgment. By preaching the doctrine of the innate evil of human nature as against the peaceful, benign nature of everything else, what is being encouraged is a persistence lack of self-confidence, a sense of hopelessness, an attitude that either we ourselves forgo a decent and exciting life or we pursue it at the expanse of nature's great harmony. This message is wrong and needs to be countered with some moderation about both the bad influence of human interference and the naivete that nature is always kind and gentle.
Tibor R. Machan
Whether this is deliberate I don't know, but many movies made for children these days have strong moralistic messages that say: We human beings are the scourge of the universe! The recently very popular production of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park onto the big screen is no exception even though the late author ended his life very skeptical about, for example, global warming alarmism. Steven Spielberg was, of course, the right candidate for bring off the earlier morality tale to screen--wasn't his ET, for example, another case of finger wagging at ordinary people for being so heartless and cruel as to want to study the creature from outer space rather than, well, cuddle it with no questions asked?
In the middle of Jurassic Park Jeff Goldblum's character, a mathematician, delivers the movie's moral message, just in case the action didn't manage to speak for itself: Any interference with the course of nature by human agency is mostly going to do harm to all concerned, so stop it, stupid! (How is it, by the way, that human nature isn't part of nature? Last I looked we were smack in the middle of it all, governed by the laws of nature to boot!) Thus when a wealthy Scott sets up the awesome park near Costa Rica featuring cloned prehistoric dinosaurs, all hell breaks loose. Never mind that there is really no reason given why this should have occurred, other than the idiocy and recklessness of one employee who seems to have been allowed to control the entire park without the slightest supervision. The lesson that we should have been given is: Don't allow loose cannons into your operations, they will muck things up.
Why is the intended message a silly one, despite how so many environmentalists mouth it regularly? Indeed, quite a few of them take part in efforts to save endangered species, ones that by the laws of nature, it would appear, are headed for extinction! The main reason is that human beings are themselves, of course, part of nature and what they can and will do can itself be evaluated as either healthful or harmful. Just because human beings interfere with nature via, say, antibiotics or pain killers or transplant operations, that itself does not show what they do to be all good or all bad. Each interference must itself be considered as either helpful or harmful. Just interference isn't the issue--after all, animals throughout the globe interfere with nature every time they devour one another, build a dam, pollinate, or reproduce.
Consider a quite recent discovery near the Great Lakes that if a good number of a parasite that has been killing other sea life there is sterilized by human beings, by way of injecting it with certain chemicals, the parasite will eventually be eradicated and the rest of the life in the lakes will begin to flourish again. Or consider, simply, Novocain or artificial limbs. All these and similar cases testify to the point that human interference with nature is often enough benign and should be encouraged.
No doubt human behavior is different from that of other living things because we have the unique attribute of free will and can act rightly and wrongly, with no guarantee against small or large mistakes. (Oddly a lot of scientists who worry about our interference in the wilds seem to think we do not have free will at all!) Thus for us it takes more than mere instincts to conduct ourselves successfully. But that is itself something in nature, the environmentalists' suggestion to the contrary notwithstanding. The idea that human beings are some sort of fungus or oddity in nature is wholly arbitrary and ignores the existence of enormous diversity throughout nature quite apart from us.
What I find of some concern is that so many adults keep trying to tell our children to distrust the only source of hope for the future, namely, sound human judgment. By preaching the doctrine of the innate evil of human nature as against the peaceful, benign nature of everything else, what is being encouraged is a persistence lack of self-confidence, a sense of hopelessness, an attitude that either we ourselves forgo a decent and exciting life or we pursue it at the expanse of nature's great harmony. This message is wrong and needs to be countered with some moderation about both the bad influence of human interference and the naivete that nature is always kind and gentle.
Notre Dame & Obama
Tibor R. Machan
There appears to be a widespread belief among Roman Catholics that so called catholic schools--including universities--owe some kind of strong allegiance to the doctrines of the church. But this is contradicted by numerous facts.
At Notre Dame, for example, quite a few professors, including some in the department of philosophy, do not even believe in God, let alone embrace the RC version of religious faith. And that would appear to be something far more objectionable to the faithful than giving a one time honorary degree to a president who, yes, holds some views that are contrary to at least a certain version of church doctrine but who on other matters may well be following the church's philosophy.
President Obama supports stem cell research, for example, which is considered by some Roman Catholics as morally wrong (although even on this there is no unanimity within the church), and he is also pro-choice on the abortion issue, believing, from what I understand, that until after about the 23rd week of pregnancy no human being has come into existence and so abortion up to that point, which kills the fetus, doesn't count as homicide, let alone murder. Indeed, both these positions contradict the standard Roman Catholic view, although whether the faithful should hold those views because they are church doctrine and part of the faith or because that is the correct biological view of the development of the human organism is not clear to me. (I know many Roman Catholics, some who teach at Roman Catholics Universities, and they are by no means in full agreement on this matter.)
What then is one to make of this brouhaha if anything at all? (Some controversies are what someone I knew forty five years ago called shamtroversies, that is, phony and made up just to have something to beef about!)
In the community of higher education, especially at post graduate centers, the tradition has developed that so long as one has earned one's academic credentials honestly, has gone through the credentialing process--earned his or her degrees fair and square--one is eligible to teach at the university level in the field of one's degrees. Whatever is looked at to certify someone is not supposed to include one's viewpoint--is one a socialist or communist or libertarian or republican, for example, even in such normatively pregnant fields such as political science, philosophy, or history. Even though this is a commonly professed ideal but not always fully followed, no university department will fess up to diverging from it (apart from certain out and out proselytizing institutions, such as Liberty University, where it is understood by everyone that a certain party line is being handed to students and no genuine academic inquiry is taking place).
But universities aren't only concerned with academic integrity and practice. They are parts of communities and very much rely on the support of alumni and others and in the matter of selecting commencement speakers and recipients of honorary degrees, the criteria aren't just academic or only barely so. One can receive an honorary doctorate without having any academic background in the field. And most often the granting of such honorary degrees is a matter of calling attention to the university, letting the world know that such and such a famous person regards it an honor to receive the degree there.
Yet there is the other side of the coin, too. By granting the degree, an institution is saying out loud, for everyone to notice, that it regards the recipient worthy of the honor being granted. Or, less naively, that with the granting of the honor one is hoping to gain favor with certain wealthy potential donors. And in that respect the criteria are varied and although on some scale a recipient may not measure up, on another he or she could do so swimmingly.
In this instance President Obama's political-economic outlook, his being such an avid supporter of social democracy and the welfare state--especially on the matter of government interference with the economy in support of fairness and equality--may very well over-ride any Roman Catholic preference for someone who is in full accord with the church's position on when a human being begins its life, etc.
So, then, this controversy is really perfectly acceptable--it amounts merely to taking an administrative decision at Notre Dame out beyond the walls of the university. It really isn't about a matter of principle. In other words, by inviting President Obama to receive an honorary degree, the school will not have gone on record contradicting Roman Catholic doctrine on anything!
Tibor R. Machan
There appears to be a widespread belief among Roman Catholics that so called catholic schools--including universities--owe some kind of strong allegiance to the doctrines of the church. But this is contradicted by numerous facts.
At Notre Dame, for example, quite a few professors, including some in the department of philosophy, do not even believe in God, let alone embrace the RC version of religious faith. And that would appear to be something far more objectionable to the faithful than giving a one time honorary degree to a president who, yes, holds some views that are contrary to at least a certain version of church doctrine but who on other matters may well be following the church's philosophy.
President Obama supports stem cell research, for example, which is considered by some Roman Catholics as morally wrong (although even on this there is no unanimity within the church), and he is also pro-choice on the abortion issue, believing, from what I understand, that until after about the 23rd week of pregnancy no human being has come into existence and so abortion up to that point, which kills the fetus, doesn't count as homicide, let alone murder. Indeed, both these positions contradict the standard Roman Catholic view, although whether the faithful should hold those views because they are church doctrine and part of the faith or because that is the correct biological view of the development of the human organism is not clear to me. (I know many Roman Catholics, some who teach at Roman Catholics Universities, and they are by no means in full agreement on this matter.)
What then is one to make of this brouhaha if anything at all? (Some controversies are what someone I knew forty five years ago called shamtroversies, that is, phony and made up just to have something to beef about!)
In the community of higher education, especially at post graduate centers, the tradition has developed that so long as one has earned one's academic credentials honestly, has gone through the credentialing process--earned his or her degrees fair and square--one is eligible to teach at the university level in the field of one's degrees. Whatever is looked at to certify someone is not supposed to include one's viewpoint--is one a socialist or communist or libertarian or republican, for example, even in such normatively pregnant fields such as political science, philosophy, or history. Even though this is a commonly professed ideal but not always fully followed, no university department will fess up to diverging from it (apart from certain out and out proselytizing institutions, such as Liberty University, where it is understood by everyone that a certain party line is being handed to students and no genuine academic inquiry is taking place).
But universities aren't only concerned with academic integrity and practice. They are parts of communities and very much rely on the support of alumni and others and in the matter of selecting commencement speakers and recipients of honorary degrees, the criteria aren't just academic or only barely so. One can receive an honorary doctorate without having any academic background in the field. And most often the granting of such honorary degrees is a matter of calling attention to the university, letting the world know that such and such a famous person regards it an honor to receive the degree there.
Yet there is the other side of the coin, too. By granting the degree, an institution is saying out loud, for everyone to notice, that it regards the recipient worthy of the honor being granted. Or, less naively, that with the granting of the honor one is hoping to gain favor with certain wealthy potential donors. And in that respect the criteria are varied and although on some scale a recipient may not measure up, on another he or she could do so swimmingly.
In this instance President Obama's political-economic outlook, his being such an avid supporter of social democracy and the welfare state--especially on the matter of government interference with the economy in support of fairness and equality--may very well over-ride any Roman Catholic preference for someone who is in full accord with the church's position on when a human being begins its life, etc.
So, then, this controversy is really perfectly acceptable--it amounts merely to taking an administrative decision at Notre Dame out beyond the walls of the university. It really isn't about a matter of principle. In other words, by inviting President Obama to receive an honorary degree, the school will not have gone on record contradicting Roman Catholic doctrine on anything!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Guaranteed Health Care
Tibor R. Machan
This morning I was checking the news on CNN and happened to tune in just as a woman, about 50 years old, was being forcibly ejected from a Senate meeting discussing reforms in the health insurance system. As she was led out she kept shouting, "We want guaranteed health care," "We have a right to guaranteed health care," and so on. Not a soul replied to her, not in the audience nor from the dais.
Why is it taken to be a palatable notion that people should get their health care guaranteed? Of course, there are other services that are treated as if people had a basic right to them, such as primary and secondary education. But then there are many services people want, even need, that few would regard as due people as a guarantee. The food we purchase at grocery stores isn't anyone's by right--if it were, farmers and other food service professionals would have to provided it without payment and on demand. For that what is due when one has a right to something. My right to my life is not something the respect for which I need to pay someone. (Yes, the protection of such a right, by the legal system, requires funding but that's not the same as its respect! Once protection comes into the picture, someone has already done violence to a right! But those who don't do this aren't getting paid!)
Genuine rights can be respected without having to do anything except abstain from their violation. If, however, an alleged right such as to education or health care or insurance is observed, someone must do something for another whether he wants to or not. That is what property taxes are, forced payments extracted from residents to pay for educational professionals, overhead, equipment, transportation, and so forth. While when we want to get something as vital to our lives as food we need to meet the terms of those who produce it, this isn't observed with education and may not be for long with health services. But why?
I can only imagine that those who advocate health care as a guarantee must think of health care professionals as involuntary servants, sort of like those who used to be drafted into a conscript military. Same with people who defend primary and secondary education as a right--they must see those who provide it as conscripts. Or they must see those who are forced to pay for these services by the professionals who are to provide them as needing to submit to forced labor! And while this may all be palatable in a feudal society, it should not be in a society that aspires to be home to free men and women instead of slaves.
That fact that no one at that Senate hearing offered even the hint of a protest to that woman who insisted that health professionals and/or those paying for their work are he conscripted servants is very discouraging. At the highest levels of government it seems it is not really an outrage to declare a professional group to be involuntary servants rather than free men and women. This in a country the leaders of which still have the audacity to call it free! And as far as I can tell, not too many professionals in the field of health care protest the idea that what they do belongs to their clients by some kind of basic right. Oh, maybe a few doctors and nurses protest, in various obscure forums. But it appears that at a Senate hearing when someone declare professionals as essentially indentured servants of their clients no one speaks out in protest.
It seems to me that here is one place where our system of elementary and secondary education lets us down but that's no great surprise either. Considering that education, too, is deemed to be a right that people ought to have guaranteed to them instead of having it be provided to clients in a system of free exchange, waiting for educators to protest the idea of education and health care being a basic right is utterly futile.
Tibor R. Machan
This morning I was checking the news on CNN and happened to tune in just as a woman, about 50 years old, was being forcibly ejected from a Senate meeting discussing reforms in the health insurance system. As she was led out she kept shouting, "We want guaranteed health care," "We have a right to guaranteed health care," and so on. Not a soul replied to her, not in the audience nor from the dais.
Why is it taken to be a palatable notion that people should get their health care guaranteed? Of course, there are other services that are treated as if people had a basic right to them, such as primary and secondary education. But then there are many services people want, even need, that few would regard as due people as a guarantee. The food we purchase at grocery stores isn't anyone's by right--if it were, farmers and other food service professionals would have to provided it without payment and on demand. For that what is due when one has a right to something. My right to my life is not something the respect for which I need to pay someone. (Yes, the protection of such a right, by the legal system, requires funding but that's not the same as its respect! Once protection comes into the picture, someone has already done violence to a right! But those who don't do this aren't getting paid!)
Genuine rights can be respected without having to do anything except abstain from their violation. If, however, an alleged right such as to education or health care or insurance is observed, someone must do something for another whether he wants to or not. That is what property taxes are, forced payments extracted from residents to pay for educational professionals, overhead, equipment, transportation, and so forth. While when we want to get something as vital to our lives as food we need to meet the terms of those who produce it, this isn't observed with education and may not be for long with health services. But why?
I can only imagine that those who advocate health care as a guarantee must think of health care professionals as involuntary servants, sort of like those who used to be drafted into a conscript military. Same with people who defend primary and secondary education as a right--they must see those who provide it as conscripts. Or they must see those who are forced to pay for these services by the professionals who are to provide them as needing to submit to forced labor! And while this may all be palatable in a feudal society, it should not be in a society that aspires to be home to free men and women instead of slaves.
That fact that no one at that Senate hearing offered even the hint of a protest to that woman who insisted that health professionals and/or those paying for their work are he conscripted servants is very discouraging. At the highest levels of government it seems it is not really an outrage to declare a professional group to be involuntary servants rather than free men and women. This in a country the leaders of which still have the audacity to call it free! And as far as I can tell, not too many professionals in the field of health care protest the idea that what they do belongs to their clients by some kind of basic right. Oh, maybe a few doctors and nurses protest, in various obscure forums. But it appears that at a Senate hearing when someone declare professionals as essentially indentured servants of their clients no one speaks out in protest.
It seems to me that here is one place where our system of elementary and secondary education lets us down but that's no great surprise either. Considering that education, too, is deemed to be a right that people ought to have guaranteed to them instead of having it be provided to clients in a system of free exchange, waiting for educators to protest the idea of education and health care being a basic right is utterly futile.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Some Paradoxes Worth Wider Attention!
Tibor R. Machan
Here is a paradox in the position being championed by several commentators on a prominent anti-vivisectionist website: If other animals may kill and maim fellow animals, and if human beings aren’t significantly different from other animals, why are human beings derided for killing and maiming other animals just as those kill and maim other animals? All those pictures of animals that have been hurt by people could be matched by pictures of animals that have been hurt by non-human animals. Nature is replete with cases of that kind. Some defenders of non-human animals claim that humans are not all that different from other animals; if this is so, why do they demand that humans treat non-humans so differently from how non-humans treat other non-humans?
This paradox is a serious one and it requires an answer from those who condemn human beings for treating non-human animals hurtfully! But there are others, too, that are worth mentioning.
There are innumerable scientists and philosophers who hold that everything that occurs in the world had to occur or, to put it differently, there is no freedom of choice or free will in human existence--que sera, sera or what will be will be. Often this position is also expressed by defenders of evolutionary theory or Darwinians. They claim that with Darwin's views well established, we know now that everything in the living world happens as a result of the principles identified by Darwin and his students. Although Darwin made some attempt to reconcile his views with the idea of morality in human life, it is widely thought that there is no way to reconcile those views with the theory of free will or human origination or initiation of action, behavior, or conduct--i. e., with personal responsibility.
Yet, many among those who subscribe to the Darwinian position, especially in the environmental movement, engage in talk about how human beings should have done this rather than that with the environment, how they ought to have helped preserve endangered species, how they should not have cleared rain forests, or depleted rivers or lakes of fish, or drive SUVs., etc. Furthermore, many of these persons also claim that human beings have a choice between, say, what former Vice-President Al Gore is advising people to do and the opposite, which he advises people not to do. Evidently, then, Mr. Gore and millions of his more or less well educated followers believe that people do have free will and are not compelled to behave along lines the forces of evolution makes them behave.
There is a unit now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which is working on revising America's criminal law system in line with the view that free will is an illusion and there are no criminal culprits who can be held responsible for their illegal conduct. "Proponents of neuroscientific evidence say it can help make the judicial system more accurate and less biased on matters of guilt, punishment, and treatment, on the detection of lies and bias, and in the prediction of criminal behavior. They believe the result could be less crime and fewer people in prisons...." Although described in terms that do not straightforwardly reveal the orientation of the project's supporters and administrators, the bottom line once one reads through what is available at the project's website is clear, namely, that human choice is an illusion and thus the concept of criminal responsibility must be purged from the legal system.
Here, too, a paradox arises since the project is very judgmental, viewing as it does the American criminal law wrongheaded and in need of serious revision. But, of course, if no one has any choice about what he or she is doing, neither did all those who were instrumental in fashioning America's system of criminal law. Everything happened as it had to and will continue to happen as it must. All the hand-wringing is then utterly pointless.
A short piece is not where the paradoxes can be addressed fully but it can bring to the attention of the general public what is cooking at some of America's higher education institutions.
Tibor R. Machan
Here is a paradox in the position being championed by several commentators on a prominent anti-vivisectionist website: If other animals may kill and maim fellow animals, and if human beings aren’t significantly different from other animals, why are human beings derided for killing and maiming other animals just as those kill and maim other animals? All those pictures of animals that have been hurt by people could be matched by pictures of animals that have been hurt by non-human animals. Nature is replete with cases of that kind. Some defenders of non-human animals claim that humans are not all that different from other animals; if this is so, why do they demand that humans treat non-humans so differently from how non-humans treat other non-humans?
This paradox is a serious one and it requires an answer from those who condemn human beings for treating non-human animals hurtfully! But there are others, too, that are worth mentioning.
There are innumerable scientists and philosophers who hold that everything that occurs in the world had to occur or, to put it differently, there is no freedom of choice or free will in human existence--que sera, sera or what will be will be. Often this position is also expressed by defenders of evolutionary theory or Darwinians. They claim that with Darwin's views well established, we know now that everything in the living world happens as a result of the principles identified by Darwin and his students. Although Darwin made some attempt to reconcile his views with the idea of morality in human life, it is widely thought that there is no way to reconcile those views with the theory of free will or human origination or initiation of action, behavior, or conduct--i. e., with personal responsibility.
Yet, many among those who subscribe to the Darwinian position, especially in the environmental movement, engage in talk about how human beings should have done this rather than that with the environment, how they ought to have helped preserve endangered species, how they should not have cleared rain forests, or depleted rivers or lakes of fish, or drive SUVs., etc. Furthermore, many of these persons also claim that human beings have a choice between, say, what former Vice-President Al Gore is advising people to do and the opposite, which he advises people not to do. Evidently, then, Mr. Gore and millions of his more or less well educated followers believe that people do have free will and are not compelled to behave along lines the forces of evolution makes them behave.
There is a unit now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which is working on revising America's criminal law system in line with the view that free will is an illusion and there are no criminal culprits who can be held responsible for their illegal conduct. "Proponents of neuroscientific evidence say it can help make the judicial system more accurate and less biased on matters of guilt, punishment, and treatment, on the detection of lies and bias, and in the prediction of criminal behavior. They believe the result could be less crime and fewer people in prisons...." Although described in terms that do not straightforwardly reveal the orientation of the project's supporters and administrators, the bottom line once one reads through what is available at the project's website is clear, namely, that human choice is an illusion and thus the concept of criminal responsibility must be purged from the legal system.
Here, too, a paradox arises since the project is very judgmental, viewing as it does the American criminal law wrongheaded and in need of serious revision. But, of course, if no one has any choice about what he or she is doing, neither did all those who were instrumental in fashioning America's system of criminal law. Everything happened as it had to and will continue to happen as it must. All the hand-wringing is then utterly pointless.
A short piece is not where the paradoxes can be addressed fully but it can bring to the attention of the general public what is cooking at some of America's higher education institutions.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Must they all be troubled?
Tibor R. Machan
As millions of others, I too like going to the movies, renting them or catching them on cable, even regular TV. Not that I do this a lot--I also entertain myself with novels, non-fiction works, and my brand new iPod, with its about 15 thousand selections of nearly every kind of music. I even listen to some online music offerings, such as what is playing in the background just now, "Piano Jazz" from Lucky 7 Radio. And then there is all the traveling I do, during which I visit museums and galleries and book shops and such. I am fortunate in that much of what the world offers up for amusement, entertainment, study, and curiosity holds out for me a good deal that I welcome.
All this is to launch into a minor complaint. It is that so many movies about interesting people--notables, both fictional and historical--end up being downers. No, I have not done a scholarly study of this but it seems to me that a great deal of stuff offered up in the biopic category focuses on lamentable people or lives, even when they are quite interesting. I'll try to pick at random: Byrd, the movie that Clint Eastwood made of Charlie Parker. Yes, it has some incredibly good music but the story was such a dark one for me that I have never wanted to see it again. Even Ray, that musically riveting movie about Ray Charles, had simply too much in it that prevented one from feeling good about it. I supposed Beyond the Sea, about the life and music of Bobby Darin, could be regarded as positive, although I had a hard time keeping my mind off the fact that Darin, a very upbeat entertainer-singer, died so young.
The other day I went to see The Soloist, with the actors Robert Downey, Jr., and Jamie Foxx (whose depiction of Ray Charles was so superb). Downey played the LA Times columnist Steve Lopez and Foxx plays Nathaniel Ayers, a former violin prodigy who appears to have bouts with schizophrenia as the movie depicts it, based on the novel Lopez wrote of his experience with Ayers (both of who are actual persons living in Los Angeles).
Many thousands of people have mental problems but not all of them are (a) musically gifted and (b) living among thousands of homeless people in the most run down spot in Southern California. (Why no movie about Erroll Garner, with his absolutely upbeat piano style and not uninteresting though too short life?)
There is no doubt that the performances, by all the major players, were excellent. The story hung together well and the movie was very professionally made. So then what's the trouble?
Well, the book on which the movie is based was selected at my university as what incoming students are invited to read in preparation for the commencement of the university education. And as such, no less than as a matter of entertainment, The Soloist leaves a lot to be desired. The general inference a movie viewer is likely to take away from having seen the film is that something is very wrong with America, especially Southern California, for allowing within its midst a huge group of individuals who are mentally unstable and impoverished and uncared for, as well. The way we see Ayers' life unfold we get only little bits of his great talent and he satisfaction with the little use he can make of it. Instead the film focuses on all the horrors of his situation except for the fact that columnist Lopez manages to inject some measure of calm and even pleasure into Ayers' life.
I am doubly annoyed with The Soloist, the movie, because there is another book, a novel with the identical title, written by Mark Salzman who has several other good novels to his name, written about 15 years before Lopez wrote his book. It has a generally similar theme though by no means identical. Failed genius is the common denominator, as well as the operative instrument, a cello.
Salzman's novel, however, is by all accounts a more entertaining and intellectually challenging book--the topic of free choice in the midst of mental disturbance figures in it quite heavily, as well as some intercultural issues involved martial arts. I loved that book and recommended it to everyone who would listen to me about such matters and when I first heard of the movie The Soloist, my hopes were high that it would be based on Salzman's novel. Alas is isn't. And in the shadow of Salzman's work Lopez's turns out to be a not altogether subtle example of bourgeois America-bashing.
Well, thanks but no thanks for that. I am only sorry for the students who accepted the invitation and went away from the experience with bad feelings about their society.
Tibor R. Machan
As millions of others, I too like going to the movies, renting them or catching them on cable, even regular TV. Not that I do this a lot--I also entertain myself with novels, non-fiction works, and my brand new iPod, with its about 15 thousand selections of nearly every kind of music. I even listen to some online music offerings, such as what is playing in the background just now, "Piano Jazz" from Lucky 7 Radio. And then there is all the traveling I do, during which I visit museums and galleries and book shops and such. I am fortunate in that much of what the world offers up for amusement, entertainment, study, and curiosity holds out for me a good deal that I welcome.
All this is to launch into a minor complaint. It is that so many movies about interesting people--notables, both fictional and historical--end up being downers. No, I have not done a scholarly study of this but it seems to me that a great deal of stuff offered up in the biopic category focuses on lamentable people or lives, even when they are quite interesting. I'll try to pick at random: Byrd, the movie that Clint Eastwood made of Charlie Parker. Yes, it has some incredibly good music but the story was such a dark one for me that I have never wanted to see it again. Even Ray, that musically riveting movie about Ray Charles, had simply too much in it that prevented one from feeling good about it. I supposed Beyond the Sea, about the life and music of Bobby Darin, could be regarded as positive, although I had a hard time keeping my mind off the fact that Darin, a very upbeat entertainer-singer, died so young.
The other day I went to see The Soloist, with the actors Robert Downey, Jr., and Jamie Foxx (whose depiction of Ray Charles was so superb). Downey played the LA Times columnist Steve Lopez and Foxx plays Nathaniel Ayers, a former violin prodigy who appears to have bouts with schizophrenia as the movie depicts it, based on the novel Lopez wrote of his experience with Ayers (both of who are actual persons living in Los Angeles).
Many thousands of people have mental problems but not all of them are (a) musically gifted and (b) living among thousands of homeless people in the most run down spot in Southern California. (Why no movie about Erroll Garner, with his absolutely upbeat piano style and not uninteresting though too short life?)
There is no doubt that the performances, by all the major players, were excellent. The story hung together well and the movie was very professionally made. So then what's the trouble?
Well, the book on which the movie is based was selected at my university as what incoming students are invited to read in preparation for the commencement of the university education. And as such, no less than as a matter of entertainment, The Soloist leaves a lot to be desired. The general inference a movie viewer is likely to take away from having seen the film is that something is very wrong with America, especially Southern California, for allowing within its midst a huge group of individuals who are mentally unstable and impoverished and uncared for, as well. The way we see Ayers' life unfold we get only little bits of his great talent and he satisfaction with the little use he can make of it. Instead the film focuses on all the horrors of his situation except for the fact that columnist Lopez manages to inject some measure of calm and even pleasure into Ayers' life.
I am doubly annoyed with The Soloist, the movie, because there is another book, a novel with the identical title, written by Mark Salzman who has several other good novels to his name, written about 15 years before Lopez wrote his book. It has a generally similar theme though by no means identical. Failed genius is the common denominator, as well as the operative instrument, a cello.
Salzman's novel, however, is by all accounts a more entertaining and intellectually challenging book--the topic of free choice in the midst of mental disturbance figures in it quite heavily, as well as some intercultural issues involved martial arts. I loved that book and recommended it to everyone who would listen to me about such matters and when I first heard of the movie The Soloist, my hopes were high that it would be based on Salzman's novel. Alas is isn't. And in the shadow of Salzman's work Lopez's turns out to be a not altogether subtle example of bourgeois America-bashing.
Well, thanks but no thanks for that. I am only sorry for the students who accepted the invitation and went away from the experience with bad feelings about their society.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Social Scientists and Ethics
Tibor R. Machan
I wish to revisit a topic here I have investigated before, both in books (such as my very first, The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner [1973] and the more recent Initiative--Human Agency and Society [2000]). In my line of work I come across a lot of social scientists--at conferences, my own school and in the pages of the kinds of books, magazines, and journals I read. It is from such social scientists that come many of the studies on which policy makers rely. How should prisons be designed and managed? How should children be treated in their elementary and secondary classrooms? What about the best way to care of the elderly? What should be done about illegal immigrants? What of the homeless, especially those regarded to be mentally unstable? A great number of questions like these are being addressed and answered by social scientists--in political science, sociology, economics, anthropology, and other, even more specialized, disciplines.
A widespread assumption that many such scientists accept is that what people do is explainable by reference to various factors to which they have been exposed or, alternatively, by the composition of their brains. People’s economic background or culture or childhood circumstances or racial/ethnic identity will have a lot to do with how they behave. These factors, and others mostly coming to light in the fields of biology and psychology, make us who we are, period. That, indeed, is the reason billions of dollars are spent on the studies these social scientists carry out. The results are supposed to enable the relevant people to forge successfully policies.
All the while these social scientists are committed to explaining human affairs along lines familiar in the natural or physical sciences--astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology--there are many others close to government, mainly political candidates and elected officials, who view us as if we really had a say in how we behave. Whatever our background or upbringing, it turns out we ought to support higher or lower taxes; we ought to be for or against torture or the war on terrorism; we ought to give more or less to charity than we do or at least support or opposed faith based institutions that help people.
In short, there is a lot of talk about how people ought to act, regardless of what supposedly makes them tick. They ought to be truthful, just, generous, prudent, compassionate, well disciplined and so forth, because, well, it is the right way to be. Never mind your background--as a human being you are supposed to be free to choose what you will or won’t do and there are standards you ought to use to guide your conduct.
Did you notice something curious here? If the social scientists are right and what we do is explainable by reference to all those factors they keep mentioning, then there really is no room for talk about what we ought to do or ought not to do. We will just behave the way we are made to behave by these various factors. There is no choice to be found in this approach to dealing with people, none at all.
The moralists, in turn, seem to think that we are free and responsible to choose the right course. They rarely see any excuse for our misconduct. All those factors are supposed by them to be mere influences, at most, certainly not compulsions. We can be blamed for all the misconduct and praised for all the good conduct because, well, it is we who are in charge of what we do.
These two points of view are both extremely prevalent in our society and have much to do with the laws and public policies that get enacted and implemented everywhere. Yet they are mutually contradictory. It’s either que sera, sera--what will be, will be--or it is free to choose--we are in charge and fully responsible (unless something terribly serious interferes).
How does one resolve this conflict? Is there a way? Well, that’s one of the things people in my discipline, namely, philosophy, worry about a lot. Every generation tackles the issue and most philosophers have some kind of proposal to offer, not excluding me. And there may well be a right answer, although this isn’t the place to try to work that out. (A clue: the social scientists who produce all those studies that explain us often go on to advise policy makers on what they ought to do. So, they turn into moralists themselves, prescribing conduct rather than just sticking to explaining it.)
What is worth noting is that the issue is not generally touched upon in public forums. Indeed, one faces it mostly in novels--say, Mark Salzman’s The Soloist (or, for that matter, LA Times reporter Steve Lopez's similarly titled more recent work of which a movie has been made--and television drama--for example, Law & Order. But do you hear anything about this on Fox TV’s O’Reilly & Friends, PBS’s Charlie Rose, CNN’s Larry King or...well, you get the point. Sure, some mention is made of the matter in most college philosophy course but after the test is done, it tends to be forgotten. It may come up at a rehab seminar, when clients wonder whether they have the free will to “just say no.” But it is not there on most prominent forums that deal with important matters.
Too bad, for without some idea as to how to deal with it, the problem will confound and lead to much confusion, perhaps disillusionment, and most likely wasted resources.
Tibor R. Machan
I wish to revisit a topic here I have investigated before, both in books (such as my very first, The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner [1973] and the more recent Initiative--Human Agency and Society [2000]). In my line of work I come across a lot of social scientists--at conferences, my own school and in the pages of the kinds of books, magazines, and journals I read. It is from such social scientists that come many of the studies on which policy makers rely. How should prisons be designed and managed? How should children be treated in their elementary and secondary classrooms? What about the best way to care of the elderly? What should be done about illegal immigrants? What of the homeless, especially those regarded to be mentally unstable? A great number of questions like these are being addressed and answered by social scientists--in political science, sociology, economics, anthropology, and other, even more specialized, disciplines.
A widespread assumption that many such scientists accept is that what people do is explainable by reference to various factors to which they have been exposed or, alternatively, by the composition of their brains. People’s economic background or culture or childhood circumstances or racial/ethnic identity will have a lot to do with how they behave. These factors, and others mostly coming to light in the fields of biology and psychology, make us who we are, period. That, indeed, is the reason billions of dollars are spent on the studies these social scientists carry out. The results are supposed to enable the relevant people to forge successfully policies.
All the while these social scientists are committed to explaining human affairs along lines familiar in the natural or physical sciences--astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology--there are many others close to government, mainly political candidates and elected officials, who view us as if we really had a say in how we behave. Whatever our background or upbringing, it turns out we ought to support higher or lower taxes; we ought to be for or against torture or the war on terrorism; we ought to give more or less to charity than we do or at least support or opposed faith based institutions that help people.
In short, there is a lot of talk about how people ought to act, regardless of what supposedly makes them tick. They ought to be truthful, just, generous, prudent, compassionate, well disciplined and so forth, because, well, it is the right way to be. Never mind your background--as a human being you are supposed to be free to choose what you will or won’t do and there are standards you ought to use to guide your conduct.
Did you notice something curious here? If the social scientists are right and what we do is explainable by reference to all those factors they keep mentioning, then there really is no room for talk about what we ought to do or ought not to do. We will just behave the way we are made to behave by these various factors. There is no choice to be found in this approach to dealing with people, none at all.
The moralists, in turn, seem to think that we are free and responsible to choose the right course. They rarely see any excuse for our misconduct. All those factors are supposed by them to be mere influences, at most, certainly not compulsions. We can be blamed for all the misconduct and praised for all the good conduct because, well, it is we who are in charge of what we do.
These two points of view are both extremely prevalent in our society and have much to do with the laws and public policies that get enacted and implemented everywhere. Yet they are mutually contradictory. It’s either que sera, sera--what will be, will be--or it is free to choose--we are in charge and fully responsible (unless something terribly serious interferes).
How does one resolve this conflict? Is there a way? Well, that’s one of the things people in my discipline, namely, philosophy, worry about a lot. Every generation tackles the issue and most philosophers have some kind of proposal to offer, not excluding me. And there may well be a right answer, although this isn’t the place to try to work that out. (A clue: the social scientists who produce all those studies that explain us often go on to advise policy makers on what they ought to do. So, they turn into moralists themselves, prescribing conduct rather than just sticking to explaining it.)
What is worth noting is that the issue is not generally touched upon in public forums. Indeed, one faces it mostly in novels--say, Mark Salzman’s The Soloist (or, for that matter, LA Times reporter Steve Lopez's similarly titled more recent work of which a movie has been made--and television drama--for example, Law & Order. But do you hear anything about this on Fox TV’s O’Reilly & Friends, PBS’s Charlie Rose, CNN’s Larry King or...well, you get the point. Sure, some mention is made of the matter in most college philosophy course but after the test is done, it tends to be forgotten. It may come up at a rehab seminar, when clients wonder whether they have the free will to “just say no.” But it is not there on most prominent forums that deal with important matters.
Too bad, for without some idea as to how to deal with it, the problem will confound and lead to much confusion, perhaps disillusionment, and most likely wasted resources.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Without a plan
Tibor R. Machan
A huge difference between champions of the fully free society (or libertarianism) and others who are concerned with political economic matters is that the former really do not approve of imposing any kind of agenda on the lives of others no matter how desirable it would be. Not even universal education, let alone universal health care, is deemed important enough for libertarians to assume power over other people--e.g., the parents of children, those with ailing elderly in their homes, etc. Unless there really is negligence involved, such that someone is failing to fulfill a legal obligation to feed his or her children, the government simply has no role. Furthermore, those who really accept the imperative to respect the rights of everyone to live as they choose provided no one's rights are being violated, may not force others to do the right thing in, say, abstaining from racial or gender discrimination at the work place, just as this is something one may not impose on others in their personal lives.
This full commitment to human liberty is really quite an unusual and often difficult stance. Yet it is at the heart of the difference between what a free and what an authoritarian or totalitarian society is about. Just as no one may force others to go to a certain church, regardless of how sincerely and devoutly one holds to one's religions faith, neither may these other practices that to many appear to be elementary decency be imposed on other persons. Just as no one may impose on others what they must read, so others must not be forced to do all kinds of things that are deemed to be just and proper. Just as in one's personal life one must be free to choose with whom one will or will not associate, the same holds for one's professional associations. (There are some intricacies here that can make it appear that one isn't free to avoid others with whom one doesn't want to fraternize--as when one joins a club that has a non-discriminatory policy--but those are complications that would need to be discussed elsewhere.)
Many decent people recoil in disgust from these elements of a free society while they accept others which are very similar. They do not mind that freedom implies that people can read or write whatever they please, however immoral it may be; yet they refuse to accept that one has a basic--and should have a legal--right to adopt highly objectionable policies at the factory or office that one owns. They see nothing odd about people refusing to accept someone into their family who does not share their religious or even political convictions while they consider it impermissible that they may refuse to hire such people even if this is a fully disclosed condition for employment.
The realm of the private is far broader in a free society than most people realize, so private choices and preferences have a greater scope. Which can be a very benign influence over the society as well as introduce some not very admirable ones. This, however, is the implication of taking the right to liberty really seriously instead of cherry picking liberties that one likes and are uncontroversial.
A truly free country leaves it to its citizens to plan their lives, for better or for worse, and refuses to permit the imposition of plans on them even by the most wise and smart among us. If one has plans for others, regardless how worthy they may be, these must be promoted without coercion, by voluntary means. That is indeed the mark of civilization--human relations must at all level adhere to the principle of free association and avoid treating people as if they may be included in the plans of others without their willing participation. However cumbersome this may appear, it is still the basic imperative of a free society.
Those who understand this and advocate it may themselves find some of the implications very distasteful. That people may indulge their anti-Semitic, racist, male chauvinist and similar objectionable attitudes is not something that is easy to accept. But if one is going to b serious about trying to build a just and free society, accepting it all is simply unavoidable.
Tibor R. Machan
A huge difference between champions of the fully free society (or libertarianism) and others who are concerned with political economic matters is that the former really do not approve of imposing any kind of agenda on the lives of others no matter how desirable it would be. Not even universal education, let alone universal health care, is deemed important enough for libertarians to assume power over other people--e.g., the parents of children, those with ailing elderly in their homes, etc. Unless there really is negligence involved, such that someone is failing to fulfill a legal obligation to feed his or her children, the government simply has no role. Furthermore, those who really accept the imperative to respect the rights of everyone to live as they choose provided no one's rights are being violated, may not force others to do the right thing in, say, abstaining from racial or gender discrimination at the work place, just as this is something one may not impose on others in their personal lives.
This full commitment to human liberty is really quite an unusual and often difficult stance. Yet it is at the heart of the difference between what a free and what an authoritarian or totalitarian society is about. Just as no one may force others to go to a certain church, regardless of how sincerely and devoutly one holds to one's religions faith, neither may these other practices that to many appear to be elementary decency be imposed on other persons. Just as no one may impose on others what they must read, so others must not be forced to do all kinds of things that are deemed to be just and proper. Just as in one's personal life one must be free to choose with whom one will or will not associate, the same holds for one's professional associations. (There are some intricacies here that can make it appear that one isn't free to avoid others with whom one doesn't want to fraternize--as when one joins a club that has a non-discriminatory policy--but those are complications that would need to be discussed elsewhere.)
Many decent people recoil in disgust from these elements of a free society while they accept others which are very similar. They do not mind that freedom implies that people can read or write whatever they please, however immoral it may be; yet they refuse to accept that one has a basic--and should have a legal--right to adopt highly objectionable policies at the factory or office that one owns. They see nothing odd about people refusing to accept someone into their family who does not share their religious or even political convictions while they consider it impermissible that they may refuse to hire such people even if this is a fully disclosed condition for employment.
The realm of the private is far broader in a free society than most people realize, so private choices and preferences have a greater scope. Which can be a very benign influence over the society as well as introduce some not very admirable ones. This, however, is the implication of taking the right to liberty really seriously instead of cherry picking liberties that one likes and are uncontroversial.
A truly free country leaves it to its citizens to plan their lives, for better or for worse, and refuses to permit the imposition of plans on them even by the most wise and smart among us. If one has plans for others, regardless how worthy they may be, these must be promoted without coercion, by voluntary means. That is indeed the mark of civilization--human relations must at all level adhere to the principle of free association and avoid treating people as if they may be included in the plans of others without their willing participation. However cumbersome this may appear, it is still the basic imperative of a free society.
Those who understand this and advocate it may themselves find some of the implications very distasteful. That people may indulge their anti-Semitic, racist, male chauvinist and similar objectionable attitudes is not something that is easy to accept. But if one is going to b serious about trying to build a just and free society, accepting it all is simply unavoidable.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Nudging Revisited
Tibor R. Machan
Ideas do have consequences and this is quite evident with the current administration's adoption of what has been labelled--or mislabelled--"libertarian paternalism." It was two political economists, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, who proposed the notion that what government should do is not intervene in the market forcefully, the way champions of the New Deal would advocate, but by establishing numerous incentives that would nudge people to do the right thing. (This approach is nicely laid out in Franklin Foer and Noam Scheiber, "Nudge-ocracy," The New Republic, May 6, 2009.)
The approach favored by Thaler and Sunstein is one that is gaining much respect from center-left liberals because it avoids the failed and not too popular policies of aggressive interventionism, the sort that in fact had a lot to do with America's current economic mess. (It involved, for example, requiring mortgage providers to offer very low rates, ones that would never have been possible in a bona fide market economy.) Not ever wishing to give up on the policy of messing with the market instead of leaving it to its own resources, left of center liberals are happy to embrace nudge-ocracy since it keeps a bunch of conceited technocrats in charge of society. And here is where the problem lies, a problem that I do not see any of the advocates of this new approach confronting.
Thaler, Sunstein, Foer, and Scheiber simply ignore one of the most important insights of modern economics, namely public choice theory. Advocates of nudge-ocracy divide the country into two groups--economic market agents whose judgments they do not trust because they are supposedly baffled by the myriad of choices available to them, versus the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington and other corridors of power who have the benefit of superior wisdom, foresight, prudence, and even omniscience with which to manage the economy.
But as public choice theory shows, first and foremost these politicians and bureaucrats are not disinterested, neutral parties but have agendas of their own. Furthermore, considering how difficult if not impossible it is to know just what objectives should be pursued and foisted upon the citizenry by government intervention--including by means of nudging--there is the additional problem that partisan, biased regulators (or nudge-ocrats) cannot help but advance their own priorities as they make policy.
Just consider how difficult, if not outright impossible, it is to know all the details of the public interest, the general welfare, or the common good. (The American founders got it right: the public good is simply for everyone to be free to pursue his or her happiness!) Interventionists suffer from the conceit that they know what people ought to choose and proceed to set up their structure of incentives accordingly. But this is a fatal conceit, as F. A. Hayek so aptly described it--these folks do not know how people should choose; they only imagine they know. They have all kinds of nifty ideas of what sort of insurance programs are best for us all, what retirements programs workers should sign up for, whether people should save or spend money, etc., etc. The nudge-ocrats make no secret of their confidence that they know it all for the vast numbers of Americans. But this confidence is entirely unjustified. The problem is that since they do not know what is best for us all, when they make general policy they cannot get it right. There is simply no way to get it right for millions and millions of people with their highly varied priorities and opportunities.
But the nudge-ocrats insist that they do know it and proceed to forge elaborate schemes to steer us in the direction they believe we all ought to aim for. Since, first of all, this is a myth and, second, they have goals of their own which they mistake for the goals of those whom they propose to nudge, they will mostly foul things up good and hard. (Now and then, of course, they can get things right, too--as with the broken clock that gets the time right twice a day!)
With just a bit of attention to Hayek's thesis of the fatal conceit and the Tullock-Buchanan's thesis of public choice, the error of nudge-ocracy could become evident. But the conceit prevents these folks from even considering these obstacles to their outlook!
Tibor R. Machan
Ideas do have consequences and this is quite evident with the current administration's adoption of what has been labelled--or mislabelled--"libertarian paternalism." It was two political economists, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, who proposed the notion that what government should do is not intervene in the market forcefully, the way champions of the New Deal would advocate, but by establishing numerous incentives that would nudge people to do the right thing. (This approach is nicely laid out in Franklin Foer and Noam Scheiber, "Nudge-ocracy," The New Republic, May 6, 2009.)
The approach favored by Thaler and Sunstein is one that is gaining much respect from center-left liberals because it avoids the failed and not too popular policies of aggressive interventionism, the sort that in fact had a lot to do with America's current economic mess. (It involved, for example, requiring mortgage providers to offer very low rates, ones that would never have been possible in a bona fide market economy.) Not ever wishing to give up on the policy of messing with the market instead of leaving it to its own resources, left of center liberals are happy to embrace nudge-ocracy since it keeps a bunch of conceited technocrats in charge of society. And here is where the problem lies, a problem that I do not see any of the advocates of this new approach confronting.
Thaler, Sunstein, Foer, and Scheiber simply ignore one of the most important insights of modern economics, namely public choice theory. Advocates of nudge-ocracy divide the country into two groups--economic market agents whose judgments they do not trust because they are supposedly baffled by the myriad of choices available to them, versus the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington and other corridors of power who have the benefit of superior wisdom, foresight, prudence, and even omniscience with which to manage the economy.
But as public choice theory shows, first and foremost these politicians and bureaucrats are not disinterested, neutral parties but have agendas of their own. Furthermore, considering how difficult if not impossible it is to know just what objectives should be pursued and foisted upon the citizenry by government intervention--including by means of nudging--there is the additional problem that partisan, biased regulators (or nudge-ocrats) cannot help but advance their own priorities as they make policy.
Just consider how difficult, if not outright impossible, it is to know all the details of the public interest, the general welfare, or the common good. (The American founders got it right: the public good is simply for everyone to be free to pursue his or her happiness!) Interventionists suffer from the conceit that they know what people ought to choose and proceed to set up their structure of incentives accordingly. But this is a fatal conceit, as F. A. Hayek so aptly described it--these folks do not know how people should choose; they only imagine they know. They have all kinds of nifty ideas of what sort of insurance programs are best for us all, what retirements programs workers should sign up for, whether people should save or spend money, etc., etc. The nudge-ocrats make no secret of their confidence that they know it all for the vast numbers of Americans. But this confidence is entirely unjustified. The problem is that since they do not know what is best for us all, when they make general policy they cannot get it right. There is simply no way to get it right for millions and millions of people with their highly varied priorities and opportunities.
But the nudge-ocrats insist that they do know it and proceed to forge elaborate schemes to steer us in the direction they believe we all ought to aim for. Since, first of all, this is a myth and, second, they have goals of their own which they mistake for the goals of those whom they propose to nudge, they will mostly foul things up good and hard. (Now and then, of course, they can get things right, too--as with the broken clock that gets the time right twice a day!)
With just a bit of attention to Hayek's thesis of the fatal conceit and the Tullock-Buchanan's thesis of public choice, the error of nudge-ocracy could become evident. But the conceit prevents these folks from even considering these obstacles to their outlook!
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